Seeking safe way out of pandemic

At an urgent video conference held in the evening on 29 October, EU leaders discussed the need to strengthen the collective effort to fight the Covid-19 pandemic, with a focus on testing and tracing policies, and on vaccines distribution, the EU press service reported. “We very much agreed, it was repeated around the video conference table, to guarantee a fair distribution between Member States in the case of contracts signed by the Commission, and those we hope will be signed in the coming weeks,” Council President Charles Michel told a news conference after the summit.

The Brexit talks moved to Brussels last Thursday with EU and UK negotiators eying a breakthrough in the wrangling over the trade deal. Lead negotiators Michel Barnier and Lord Frost met in the Belgian capital after a week of intensified talks in London.

French President Emmanuel Macron declared a new nationwide lockdown from 30 October to stem a surge in coronavirus patients in hospitals, warning that the second wave of the virus is “likely to be deadlier than the first”. In a prime-time televised address, Macron said the lockdown would be enforced initially until 1 December, though schools and creches will remain open.

The Commission is making €220m available to finance a safe cross-border transfer of patients where it is needed. It is in response of the serious situation of rising cases of infections,  hospitalisations and deaths across Europe during the second wave of Covid-19 pandemic.

Germany has recorded 18,681 new coronavirus infections over a 24-hour period, the Robert Koch Institute for disease control said on Friday. This marks the country's highest daily increase since the pandemic began, dpa reported.

France’s anti-terrorism prosecutor said the Nice attacker was not on the radar of intelligence agencies as a potential threat, AP reported. At a press conference late Thursday Jean-Francois Ricard said the man who killed three in a Nice church was a Tunisian aged about 20 who entered France from Italy, and was carrying a copy of Islam’s holy book, the Quran, on him at the time of the attack.

The dollar paused its climb on Friday, while the euro wallowed near its four-week low against the greenback after the European Central Bank signalled more stimulus may come in December as COVID-19 rips into the economy, news wires reported.

In the heart of the plain situated east of the town of Asenovgrad, in southern Bulgaria, is the location of the Monastery St Nedelya, better known as the Arapovski Monastery. It was established in 1856 near the healing holy spring outside the village of Zlatovrah, which was once named Arapovo. This is the only entirely new Bulgarian cloister built during the Ottoman rule, as it was not a restoration of a previous one.

Nearly 200 airports across Europe are on the brink of an insolvency abyss following the slump in air travel, the airports' trade body has warned. A report by Airports Council International (ACI) Europe has estimated that no less than 193 airports on the continent “face insolvency in the coming months if passenger traffic does not start to recover by the year-end”.

The EP Budgets Committee adopted on Wednesday a resolution setting the overall level of the 2021 EU budget, the first of the new MFF, at just under €182bn in commitment appropriations, which beefs it up with new €15bn compared to the Commission's suggestion.