Author: News Desk

Berlin : German Chancellor Angela Merkel will travel to Moscow next Friday to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, said dpa international. Details of their agenda will be announced in the coming days, German government spokesperson Steffen Seibert said. The Kremlin side was also vague, saying only the leaders will discuss German-Russian relations as well as international issues of concern at the August 20 talks. Relations between Berlin and Moscow are tense, with disagreements over jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, an alleged Russian-ordered assassination of a Georgian citizen of Chechen origin in a Berlin park in 2019 and a hacking attack…

Italy : COVID-19 has claimed the lives of numerous minors in Italy and it is necessary to step up the drive to have a coronavirus vaccine for children, the Italian Society of Paediatrics (SIP) said. SIP said 240,105 COVID-19 cases in Italy (5.5% of the total) and 14 COVID-linked deaths regarded children aged nine or younger. It said 436,938 cases (10% of the total) and 16 deaths regarded young people aged 10-to19. “We need a safe, effective vaccine,” the SIP said via Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and Telegram. “We need a shield to defend our children from this terrible virus with…

France : French President Emmanuel Macron will stay away from a United Nations conference on racism next month because of concerns about anti-Semitism, his office said. “Concerned by a history of anti-Semitic remarks made at the U.N. conference on racism, known as the Durban conference, the President of the Republic has decided that France will not participate in the follow-up conference to be held this year,” it said. The meeting in New York is being held to mark the 20th anniversary of the 2001 conference in Durban, South Africa, which resulted in the “Durban Declaration and Programme of Action” against racism. …

Moscow: Russia has told a BBC journalist working in Moscow to leave the country by the end of this month in retaliation for what it called London’s discrimination against Russian journalists working in Britain. In an unusual move that signals a further deterioration in already poor ties between London and Moscow, the Rossiya-24 TV channel said that Sarah Rainsford, one of the British broadcaster’s two English-language Moscow correspondents, would be going home in what it called “a symbolic deportation.” The step, which amounts to a de facto expulsion, follows a crackdown before parliamentary elections in September on Russian-language media at home…

Britain: British police on Friday named Jake Davison as the 22-year-old man who went on a shooting spree that killed five people including a very young girl in the city of Plymouth, though they said the motive for the murders was unclear. Davison started shooting, possibly with a pump-action shotgun, at around 6.00 pm on Thursday, first killing a woman he knew in a house in Biddick Drive in Plymouth. He walked out of that house and shot dead a very young girl in the street along with her male relative. Davison shot at two other people who were badly injured,…

Russia : A Russian millionaire and politician has confessed to shooting a man he says he mistook for a bear. Igor Redkin was served a two-month house arrest sentence as an interim restrictive measure for accidentally shooting the man outside a dump near the village of Ozernovsky, in the Ust-Bolsheretsky district, according to state-owned news agency RIA. The shooting itself took place on August 2, and the man later died in hospital. Redkin is a member of the ruling United Russia, of which President Vladimir Putin is the de facto leader. It took the wealthy politician four days to confess…

UK : Production of the new Lord of the Rings television series will move to the UK from New Zealand, Amazon Studios has confirmed. The as-yet-untitled fantasy epic is set thousands of years before the events in JRR Tolkien’s books The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. It is a major blow for New Zealand’s entertainment industry where the award-winning movies were also filmed. UK culture secretary Oliver Dowden welcomed the decision. He said: “Thousands of high quality jobs all across the UK will be created and supported by The Lord of the Rings television series so this is…

Turkey : A huge search and rescue operation is under way in northern Turkey after flash floods along the Black Sea coast killed at least 27 people. Kastamonu province is the worst-hit area, accounting for 25 of the deaths. Two others died in Sinop on the coast. The floods caused some buildings to collapse, smashed several bridges, clogged some streets with wrecked cars and cut power supplies. This month Turkey has also had to battle huge wildfires in the south. Those fires – which are now under control – forced thousands of locals and tourists to flee Marmaris and surrounding…

London :  More than 205.2 million people have been reported to be infected by the novel coronavirus globally and 4,506,583have died, according to a Reuters tally. Infections have been reported in more than 210 countries and territories since the first cases were identified in China in December 2019.

Jakarta : Indonesian President Joko Widodo delegated Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi to bid farewell to Bahrain’s Ambassador to Jakarta Dr. Mohammad Ghassan Mohammad Adnan Sheikho remotely on Friday. Dr. Sheikho, conveyed the greetings and wishes of His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, and His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, Crown Prince and Prime Minister, to the Indonesian President, government and people, wishing them continued progress and prosperity. He expressed his sincere gratitude and appreciation for the support he received from the Indonesian President and all officials to perform diplomatic  duties, wishing the Republic…