Europe

PARIS, Jan 20 (NNN-XINHUA) – France’s Ministry of the Interior, said that, an estimated 1.12 million French people took to the streets across the country yesterday, to protest against the government’s controversial pension reform plan.

The CGT, France’s largest union, estimated the nationwide protest number at two million. According to the ministry, in Paris alone, 80,000 demonstrators expressed their discontent.

MOSCOW, Jan 20 (NNN-TASS) – Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, said that, the Ukraine crisis is “the result of preparations by the United States and its satellites, for the start of a global hybrid war” against his country.

The West is trying to prove that they are not fighting Russia, but are only helping Ukraine respond to an “aggression” and restore its territorial integrity, Lavrov said, at his annual press conference, adding that, the scale of their support makes it clear that the West has staked a great deal on its war against Russia.

DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 20 (Reuters) - Global leaders and business executives departed a freezing World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting on Friday after a frank exchange of views over how the world will tackle its biggest issues in 2023.

Here's what we learned:

ECONOMY: Gloom and doom heading into Davos turned into cautious optimism by the end with the global economic outlook for the year ahead looking better than feared.

Jan 20 (Reuters) - Russia said on Friday that relations with the United States were at an all-time low, dismissing the idea the two sides could turn things around halfway through U.S. President Joe Biden's term in office.

"Bilateral relations are probably at their lowest point historically, unfortunately," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

"There is no hope for improvement in the foreseeable future."

GENEVA, Jan 19 (Reuters) - China reported a large jump in COVID-19 hospitalisations in the week through to January 15 to the highest since the pandemic began, according to a weekly report published by the World Health Organization on Thursday.

However, the WHO said it awaited "detailed provincial data disaggregated by week of reporting" on nearly 60,000 additional COVID-related hospital deaths reported by China last week and did not include them in the tally.

MOSCOW, Jan 20 (Reuters) - The Kremlin said on Friday that Western countries supplying additional tanks to Ukraine would not change the course of the conflict and the West would regret its "delusion" that Ukraine could win on the battlefield.

European leaders meeting at the Ramstein U.S. Air Base in Germany urged Berlin on Friday to give the green light for the delivery of German-made Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine to drive back Moscow's forces, although no decision was made.

RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany/KYIV, Jan 20 (Reuters) - Germany said it would need agreement from allies to give the green light for the delivery of German-made tanks to Ukraine to fend off Moscow's invasion, apparently dashing Kyiv's hopes for a quick decision.

Defence ministers from NATO and other countries were meeting in Germany amid warnings that Russia will soon reenergise its almost 11-month-old invasion to seize parts of Ukraine's east and south it says it has annexed but does not fully control.

LONDON (AP) — A British judge on Friday rejected a lawsuit that accused the U.K. government of allowing the import of cotton products associated with forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region — though he acknowledged there were “widespread abuses” in the region’s cotton industry.

High Court justice Ian Dove ruled against a Uyghur organization and a human rights group who claimed the government unlawfully failed to investigate conditions in which cotton was produced.

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Croatia’s president said Friday that efforts by the European Union to uphold democratic standards in member countries threatened to tear the bloc apart, and condemned EU efforts to financially penalize Hungary for its alleged breaches of rule of law standards.

DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) — Inspections of ships carrying Ukrainian grain and other food exports have slowed to half their peak rate under a U.N.-brokered wartime agreement, creating backlogs in vessels meant to carry supplies to developing nations where people are going hungry, United Nations and Ukrainian officials say.

Some U.S. and Ukrainian officials accuse Russia of deliberately slowing down inspections, which a Russian official denied.