Europe

The US sells gas to Europe, which is already hit by record inflation, at much higher prices than in the domestic market, thus weakening the competitiveness of the European Union economies, Volodin wrote on Telegram on Friday.

"Based on the information provided by Ukraine, IAEA experts assessed that there was no immediate threat to nuclear safety as a result of Saturday's incident," IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said on Tuesday. He added that the Ukrainian authorities had informed the IAEA that there was damage but that radiation measurements were still at normal levels, dpa news agency reported.

"Should Ukraine, with its heroic resistance, fail to withstand Putin's imperial plans, Poland and the Baltic states would be directly threatened by a further expansion of Russia's sphere of influence into Central Europe," Duda told Tuesday's edition of Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, news agency dpa reported.

Blaszczak, also the Deputy Prime Minister, made the remarks in an interview with public broadcaster Polish Radio on Thursday, a day after Warsaw signed a deal for the purchase of South Korean arms, reports Xinhua news agency.

Amir-Abdollahian made the remarks in a phone conversation with the European Union's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell on Monday night, according to the Iranian Foreign Ministry's website. Amir-Abdollahian also urged the United States to refrain from repeating its former "ineffective approach" and "unproductive behaviour" of resorting to pressure and sanctions as leverage.

"We see a new wave of Covid-19 in many members of the European Union," Xinhua news agency quoted Marco Cavaleri, head of Biological Health Threats and Vaccines Strategy of the EMA, as saying during an online press conference from Amsterdam. "The wave is driven by BA.4 and BA.5 which are highly-transmissible," Cavaleri added.

A total of 324 MEPs voted in favour of the resolution, while 155 voted against and 38 were absent at the plenary session in Strasbourg, France, reports Xinhua news agency. "Women's rights are inalienable, and they cannot be removed or watered down," reads the resolution, which condemns the decision by the US Supreme Court to overturn the 1973 ruling.

"As Germany's Siemens, the manufacturer of the gas turbine engines, failed to provide the overhaul service in time, Gazprom decided to stop the second engine at the Portovaya compressor station due to its technical condition," the company said on Telegram. The daily output of the Portovaya compressor station from 1:30 a.m. Thursday Moscow Time (2230 GMT Wednesday) will be no more than 67 million cubic meters, sharply down from 100 million.

While reported numbers of refugees and migrants crossing the Mediterranean to Europe were fewer than in 2015, the journeys were becoming more fatal, said Shabia Mantoo, spokesperson for UNHCR, on Friday. "Since a peak in 2015, in which more than a million refugees and migrants crossed the Mediterranean to Europe, the numbers of those making these journeys had seen a downward trend," she told a press briefing.

EU authorities are set to publish a risk assessment, which will advise all member states to draw up an inoculation strategy to control the spread of the tropical virus, Daily Mail reported. No monkeypox-specific vaccine exists � but smallpox jabs � which were routinely offered to Brits until the virus was eradicated four decades ago, is 85 per cent effective, Daily Mail reported.