Britain on Thursday decided to reimpose 14-day quarantine on people travelling from France and the Netherlands, urging Paris to quickly announce a reciprocal measure, news wires reported. The move is expected to spark a mass exodus among the estimated half a million British holidaymakers currently in France, after a rise in coronavirus cases there.

North Macedonia’s president Stevo Pendarovski on Thursday handed a mandate to ex-prime minister Zoran Zaev to form a new government after his party bloc narrowly won the early election on 15 July. “I will lead a government that will not ... veer away from the road leading to membership of the EU after obtaining membership of NATO,” Zaev said.

During his one-day visit to Slovenia on Thursday the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo put on focus the case for high-speed wireless networks that bar Chinese companies like Huawei. On the second leg of a four-nation tour of central and eastern Europe, he met Slovenian officials in the mountain lake town of Bled. Pompeo is to sign a joint declaration on “5G Clean Network Security” that aims to keep untrusted telecommunications vendors out, news wires reported. The declaration will commit “to protecting the privacy and individual liberties of the citizens of the US and Slovenia.”

China has eased entry restrictions for nationals from 36 European countries, months after thousands were left stranded when the country closed its borders and slashed flights to slow the spread of COVID-19.

Police in Belarus on Wednesday said they had detained hundreds and shot at protesters in a third night of violence over a disputed presidential election. Western governments have condemned the crackdown and the European Union said the bloc's foreign ministers would discuss Belarus at an extraordinary meeting on Friday, news wires reported.

The British economy is now in recession after contracting a record 20.4% in the second quarter as the COVID-19 crisis took hold, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said on Wednesday. The British economy's decline is about twice as large as the falls recently reported by Germany, France or the US.

Intensive talks are underway between political parties in Lebanon in an effort to quickly form a government and contain public anger after the massive Beirut port blast, political sources told dpa. The news comes after Hassan Diab resigned as prime minister on Monday amid protests over the blast that killed 165 people and wounded 6,000 others.

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden on Tuesday tapped Senator Kamala Harris of California as his choice for vice president, news wires reported. "I have the great honor to announce that I’ve picked @KamalaHarris — a fearless fighter for the little guy, and one of the country’s finest public servants — as my running mate," Biden said on Twitter.

The US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Tuesday kicked off a five-day tour of four European nations with a visit to the Czech Republic, news wires reported. He was welcomed by his counterpart Tomas Petricek in the western Czech city of Plzen where he took part in an event to commemorate the liberation of the city from Nazi occupation by the US military 75 years ago at the end of World War II.

Foreign Ministers of Russia and Germany Sergei Lavrov and Heiko Maas expressed mutual disdain on Tuesday at US sanctions against those countries' Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project, dpa reported. "No state has the right to dictate Europe's energy policy with threats, and that will not succeed," Maas told reporters in Moscow.