Europe

MOSCOW, August 29. /TASS/: Russia’s COVID-19 case tally rose by 39,658 over the past day to 19,445,581, the anti-coronavirus crisis center reported on Monday.

A day earlier, 46,857 daily cases were recorded.

As many as 1,988 people were hospitalized with COVID-19 in Russia over the past day, down 15% from a day earlier. The number of hospitalized patients increased in 30 regions, while in 49 regions the figure decreased. The situation remained unchanged in six regions. A day earlier, 2,340 people were rushed to hospitals.

MOSCOW, August 29. /TASS/: Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed satisfaction with development of bilateral ties between Russia and countries of the Asia-Pacific Region and cooperation with the Eurasian Economic Union, the Shanghai Cooperation Agreement, BRICS, APEC and ASEAN.

BERLIN, August 29. /TASS/: Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz has declared the intention to pool efforts with European neighbors to create a new common air defense system in the EU. He was speaking at the Charles University in Prague on Monday. His statement was streamed on the German government’s website.

"A system created by joint efforts would be a security benefit for the whole of Europe," Scholz said, adding that it would be less costly and more efficient than any solutions at the national level.

VIENNA, Aug 29 (Reuters) - Iran is pressing ahead with its rollout of an upgrade to its advanced uranium enrichment programme, a report by the U.N. nuclear watchdog seen by Reuters on Monday showed, even as the West awaits Iran's response on salvaging its 2015 nuclear deal.

The first of three cascades, or clusters, of advanced IR-6 centrifuges recently installed at the underground Fuel Enrichment Plant (FEP) at Natanz is now enriching, the report said, the latest underground site at which the advanced machines have come onstream.

STOCKHOLM, Aug 29 (Reuters) - Swedish and Finnish rescue services began evacuating families and elderly passengers from a fire-stricken Swedish ferry in the Baltic sea late on Monday, but said the situation was calm and that no one had been injured.

About 70 out of around 300 people onboard were scheduled to be evacuated by helicopter as the powerless vessel was drifting toward the island of Gotland and risked running aground later on Monday, at roughly 2100 GMT.

ATHENS, Aug 29 (Reuters) - Greek lawmakers on Monday voted in favour of setting up an inquiry commission to probe the phone tapping of an opposition leader that led Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis to sack the head of the country's intelligence service (EYP).

The scandal over the wiretapping of Nikos Androulakis, leader of socialist party PASOK, Greece's third-largest political party, has turned up the heat on the conservative premier who brought EYP under his control after taking office three years ago.

PARIS, Aug. 28 (Xinhua) -- The highly pathogenic bird flu, avian influenza, has been detected in a duck farm in France's eastern department of Ain, causing a total of 10,600 ducks culled, French daily news Le Figaro reported on Sunday.

The State services (departmental directorate for the protection of populations) of Ain have highlighted an outbreak of avian influenza due to a strain of the H5N1 virus in a duck farm located in Saint-Nizier-le-Desert, Le Figaro reported, citing the prefecture of the Ain department.

KYIV (AP) — A U.N. nuclear watchdog team set off on an urgent mission Monday to safeguard the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia atomic power plant at the heart of fighting in Ukraine, a long-awaited trip that the world hopes will help avoid a radioactive catastrophe.

The stakes couldn’t be higher for the International Atomic Energy Agency experts who will visit the plant in a country where the 1986 Chernobyl disaster spewed radiation throughout the region, shocking the world and intensifying a global push away from nuclear energy.

GENEVA (AP) — Lawyers for Israeli diamond magnate Beny Steinmetz urged a Swiss appeals court on Monday to throw out testimony from a former first lady of Guinea that contributed to his conviction for corruption.

The case involves an alleged plot, dating to the mid-2000s, in which Steinmetz’s BSGR Group squeezed out a rival for mining rights for vast iron ore deposits in Guinea’s southeastern Simandou region. The case has exposed the shady, complex world of deal-making and the cutthroat competition in the lucrative mining business.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — One of three Dutch soldiers wounded in a shooting outside a hotel in downtown Indianapolis over the weekend has died, the Dutch Defense Ministry said Monday.

The commando died of his injuries “surrounded by family and colleagues,” the ministry said in a statement.

The soldier was one of three members of the Dutch Commando Corps who were shot and wounded early Saturday after what Indianapolis police believe was a disturbance outside the hotel where they were staying, authorities said.