Regulation on EU Digital COVID Certificate officially signed

The 14th European Development Days (EDD), a leading global forum on international partnerships and cooperation, will begin tomorrow to reflect on the road to the UN Biodiversity Conference (CBD) COP15 in Kunming in October and COP26 in Glasgow in November 2021, the EP press service reported.

Google moved a step closer to charging for the usage of Gmail as the company unveiled a paid option for small businesses, Reuters reported. The new features included in the paid mail include video chat and email newsletter functionalities.

Novavax vaccine against Covid-19 proved more than 90% effective against a variety of virus variants, the company reported on Monday. The results came from its US-based clinical trial, news wires reported. The study of nearly 30,000 volunteers puts Novavax on track to file for emergency authorisation in the US and elsewhere in the third quarter of 2021.

US President Joe Biden told fellow NATO leaders on Monday the defence of Europe, Turkey and Canada was a “sacred obligation” for the United States, a marked shift from his predecessor Donald Trump’s threats to withdraw from the military alliance, Reuters reports.

Afghan government forces abandoned or were pushed out of six more district centres across the country in the past 24 hours, as Taliban militants gain more ground, local officials confirmed on Monday cited by the dpa. The fallen district are in the provinces of Herat, Ghor, Sar-e Pul, Zabul, and Farah.

UK leading pharmaceutical producer GlaxoSmithKline announced it had reached an agreement to pay two billion dollars to US iTeos Therapeutics, Reuters reported. The payment is aimed to facilitate a tie-up to develop and sell a potential cancer treatment together. The US firm will receive a $625 million upfront payment and is eligible to get up to $1.45 billion more if the programme meets certain development and commercial milestones.

From 4 to 11 July, Plovdiv will host a comedy festival which has no analogue in the European film calendar. In the first edition of the Comedy Europe Film Festival, CEFF - Plovdiv 2021, the audience will be able to see the highest achievements from the last year in the most viewed European movie genre.

The Western alliance must respond to China's economic, political and military rise and the final NATO summit statement will present a new strategy towards Beijing, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Monday ahead of the Aliance summit in Brussels.

The EU will host on Monday and Tuesday summits with its two transatlantic partners - Canada and the US, the EU press service reported. The summits come after G-7 summit in the UK during the weekend and NATO summit on Monday.

The overall number of nuclear warheads in global military stockpiles appears to be increasing this year, a new finding released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) on Monday reveals.