Europe

LONDON, July 19. /TASS/: UK Prime Minister Theresa May came up with a "narrow definition" of liberalism in her indirect debate about the future of the liberal idea with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Russian embassy in London said.

MOSCOW, July 19. /TASS/: The concentration of military forces in the Persian Gulf region is so high that the situation is fraught with an outbreak of conflict, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told reporters on Friday commenting on Washington’s statements on destroying an Iranian drone.

MOSCOW, July 19. /TASS/: The crew of the NordWind Airlines Boeing 737 ordered passengers to evacuate due to a ‘strange smell’ in the cabin, the air carrier said in a statement on its website on Friday.

"At 00:45 Moscow time, strange smell was reported in the cabin as flight N4-477 SVO-EVN B738 (VPBSZ) was accelerating on the runway. The crew aborted the takeoff, left the runway, turned off the engines and organized the evacuation of passengers (162 adults, 11 children) using inflatable slides," the company said.

KIEV, July 19. /TASS/: Ukraine is willing to swap Editor-in-Chief of RIA Novosti Ukraine Kirill Vyshinsky, convicted by a Russian court for terrorism in Crimea Oleg Sentsov is proposed as an option for the exchange, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky said at a briefing on Friday.

"We truly want that this moment comes in the near future. We are ready to exchange Vyshinsky. Sentsov is an option, we are ready to swap [him] for Sentsov," the Ukrainian leader said.

19 July 2019; DW: Greek police have arrested 15 people suspected of facilitating migrant smuggling on two Greek islands. There are reports they charged up to €6,000 to make false travel documents.

State officials said on Thursday they detained people allegedly forming part of the two groups on the islands of Samos and Kos.

Six individuals, who are reported to include a security official working at Kos airport, were taken into custody this week.

19 July 2019; DW: The EU has accused UK leadership hopeful Boris Johnson of fake news over his complaint that "Brussels bureaucrats" made life hard for smoked herring sellers. It emerged that the rules were made by the UK, and not the EU.

A claim that EU bureaucracy harms the UK's smoked fish trade was flatly rebuffed on Thursday, when the European Commission pointed out the rule was set by Britain.

HELSINKI, July 18 (Xinhua) -- Home Affairs Ministers of the European Union (EU) countries failed to reach agreement on how to share the burden of the Mediterranean immigrant crisis in a meeting here on Thursday.

There were optimistic reports during the day about progress in creating a majority opinion on improving the Mediterranean arrivals' situation.

BRUSSELS, July 18 (Xinhua) -- Huawei board member and Senior Vice President Catherine Chen said here on Thursday that the Chinese technology giant has signed over 50 5G commercial contracts across the world. Twenty-eight of these were signed in Europe.

BERLIN (AP) — Germany is marking the 75th anniversary of the most famous plot to kill Adolf Hitler, honoring those who resisted the Nazis — who were stigmatized for decades as traitors — as pillars of the country’s modern democracy amid growing concerns about the resurgence of the far-right.

ATLANTA (AP) — The second set of summer Democratic presidential debates will feature a rematch with a twist, plus the first showdown of leading progressives as the party wrestles with its philosophical identity and looks ahead to a 2020 fight against President Donald Trump.

Former Vice President Joe Biden and California Sen. Kamala Harris will take center stage in Detroit on July 31, barely a month after Harris used the first debates to propel herself into the top tier with an aggressive takedown of the 76-year-old Biden’s long record on race.