Новости за 22.02.2021

EU ministers have agreed to impose visa-bans and asset-freezes on four Russian officials over the jailing of opposition figure Alexei Navalny, Reuters reports. The measures will target head of Russia's Investigative Committee, its director of prisons, its director of the National Guard, and Russia's prosecutor general, Reuters said, citing diplomatic sources. The EU also decided to prepare sanctions on Myanmar's junta and blacklisted 19 Venezuelan officials over its political crisis.

Italy's ambassador to the Democratic Republic of Congo, Luca Attanasio, and an Italian military-police officer were killed in an attack on their convoy on Monday, the Italian foreign ministry has said. Attanasio was travelling as part of a UN mission in Goma in the east of the country and died later in hospital. A driver was also killed, The Guardian newspaper reported, in what looked like a failed kidnap attempt.

Slovak foreign minister Ivan Korčok has appealed for EU help on advance deliveries of coronavirus vaccine due to a health crisis. "We have the highest death rate in the world at the moment ... this is a very difficult time for my country," he said in Brussels Monday ahead of talks with EU peers. "Bilateral help would be very welcome," and an "important sign" of European solidarity, he added.

US president Joe Biden pledged "America's back" as Europe's main ally on trade and climate and on pushing back against Chinese and Russian aggression in a video-link speech at the Munich Security Conference Friday. Top EU officials welcomed his remarks. This was "exactly the speech that many Europeans wanted to hear - an America that pats you on the shoulders, that doesn't criticise or demand," German magazine Der Spiegel wrote.

US president Joe Biden will mark the country crossing 500,000 lives lost from Covid-19 with a moment of silence and candle lighting ceremony at the White House, AP reports. The nation is expected to pass the grim milestone on Monday, just over a year after the first confirmed US fatality due to the novel coronavirus. Biden has made a point of recognising the lives lost in the pandemic.

European Union foreign ministers are expected to give the go-ahead Monday to sanctions on Russia over the jailing of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny and a crackdown on protests, AFP writes. They will meet in Brussels for talks that will also include a videoconference with US secretary of state Antony Blinken. The move comes two weeks after EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell was caught in a diplomatic ambush in Moscow.

Europe and the United States should, without delay, send enough Covid-19 vaccine doses to Africa to inoculate the continent's healthcare workers or risk losing influence to Russia and China, French president Emmanuel Macron said, Reuters writes. Earlier, Macron urged Europe and the United States to allocate up to 5 percent of their current vaccine supplies to developing countries in an effort to avoid an unprecedented acceleration of global inequality

Britain has pulled forward its deadline for giving at least one coronavirus jab to every adult in the country from September to 31 July, with UK health secretary Matt Hancock saying on Sunday "we now think that we have the supplies" to speed up the vaccination programme. Britain's mishandling of the pandemic saw much higher death tolls compared to most of Europe, but its inoculation scheme won back political capital.

The EU is preparing an eco-label system for air travel for 2022, according to German newspaper Welt am Sonntag, citing internal documents, which said the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) in Cologne had put out a tender for a classification system. The EASA system would be for "providing reliable, comparable, and verifiable information" for consumers on airlines and flight-routes' CO2-emissions footprints to enable customers to choose green options.

Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency struck a deal Sunday enabling nuclear weapons inspectors to keep access for three more months, pending a new deal on sanctions with the US. Iran had first threatened to kick out inspectors right away. The brinksmanship comes as US secretary of state Anthony Blinken speaks to EU foreign ministers Monday for the first time, amid EU-mediated efforts to get Tehran and Washington talking.

Unionist politicians in Northern Ireland and England have threatened legal action against the Brexit deal due to trade disruptions.

Just 10 countries have administered 75 percent of all Covid vaccines so far - while some 130 poor countries have not yet received a single dose

A letter sent to the European Economic and Social Committee by a group of cross-party MEPs fighting for LGBTi rights expresses fears that a recently-appointed Polish member may try to undermine those rights.

EU foreign affairs ministers will meet in Brussels and are expected to agree to visa-bans and asset-freezes on Russian officials involved in the jailing of opposition figurehead Alexei Navalny.

The stubborn fact is that, election after election - and it's already three consecutive absolute majorities - anti-independence forces cannot convince the majority of Catalans that our democratic rights and a better future can be attained within the Spanish kingdom.

The military coup seems to have inflamed and united a diverse and ostensibly depoliticised society. There seems to be an across the board rejection by the people of Myanmar of a return to military dictatorship.