Vaccine for Covid-19 could be available by end of 2020: EU health commissioner

China on Monday sanctioned 11 US politicians and heads of organisations in retaliation for the sanctions imposed by Washington on Hong Kong officials last week, news wires reported.

There is a “vast global gap” between funds needed to fight the coronavirus pandemic and funds committed, World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Monday. He noted the WHO was only “10% of the way” to funding the billions of dollars required.

Germany's Social Democrats have proposed Olaf Scholz, the finance minister and their most high-profile and popular politician, to run to succeed Chancellor Angela Merkel in next year's elections, when her fourth and final term is expected to end.

Poland’s PМ Mateusz Morawiecki has called on the leaders of the European Commission and the European Council to hold a special EU summit on Belarus, the cabinet in Warsaw announced on Monday.

Germany, France and Italy plan to push ahead with a bid to use EU sanctions to stem the continuing supply of arms to war-torn Libya. The three countries have agreed on a list of companies and individuals providing ships, aircraft or other logistics for the transport of weapons, in violation of a UN embargo that has been in place since 2011, EU sources told dpa.

The blood-thirsty oligarch Vasil Bozhkov, aka the Bulgarian El Chapo, is preparing to enter into politics. He will be the first to sign up for his own online political platform, as the oligarch hiding in Dubai from his 19 felony charges revealed himself.

Protests erupted across Belarus late Sunday after preliminary results showed a landslide election victory for longtime President Alexander Lukashenko, news wires reported.  Official exit polls published by state-run news agency Belta put Lukashenko ahead with about 80% of the vote, and his main rival opposition candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya at about 7%.

European Union Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides said on Sunday a vaccine for Covid-19 could become available by the end of 2020, news wires reported.

French President Emmanuel Macron and the UN are co-hosting a virtual donors' conference on Sunday to solicit international aid for Lebanon, whose capital Beirut was devastated by explosions on Tuesday that left more than 150 people dead and a quarter of a million homeless.  "We must act quickly and efficiently so that this aid goes directly to where it is needed," Macron said in his opening remarks for the conference, held by video link from his summer residence on the Mediterranean.

The US President Donald Trump signed executive orders on Saturday partly restoring enhanced unemployment payments to the tens of millions of Americans who lost jobs in the coronavirus pandemic, as polls showed a large majority of voters unhappy with his handling of the crisis.