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Scoop of the day: New coronavirus "anti-record"

Scoop of the day: New coronavirus "anti-record"

Coronavirus

Ukraine has registered 1,318 new coronavirus cases by the morning of 6 August, thus setting a new anti-record. The total number of Covid-19 cases has reached 76,808, including 1,819 fatalities and 42,524 recoveries.

Economy

Ukraine's GDP fell 6.5% down in the first half of 2020 compared with that period last year, according to the Economy Ministry. In the second quarter, it slumped by 11%.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wants parliament to consider a bill on amendments to the 2020 budget under which a minimum wage will be increased to 5,000 hryvnyas as of 1 September. Currently, it is 4,723 hryvnyas.

Zelenskyy has instructed Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal to assess possible consequences of the change of ownership at the Ukrainian aircraft engine maker Motor Sich, given businessman Oleksandr Yaroslavskyy's plans to engage Chinese investors in its development.

Shmyhal has ordered the government to check the conditions in which ammonium nitrate is stored in Ukraine, following the deadly blasts in Beirut, Lebanon.

Donbas

The Joint Forces have sustained no combat losses since the beginning of the 27 July ceasefire, the HQ has reported. No ceasefire violations have been registered since last midnight, it added.

Belarus

According to Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, Minsk has not given an official consent to extradite the members of the Wagner private military company who were detained in Belarus and who are suspected of having fought against the Ukrainian government troops in Donbas.

Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka has said that the prosecutors-general from Russia and Ukraine should be invited to Minsk to discuss the Wagner case with their Belarusian counterpart.

Activist's case

A court has extended until 21 September the night house arrest for a former Odesa leader of the Right Sector movement, Serhiy Sternenko. He is suspected of deliberately killing one of the men who attacked him in May 2018. Sternenko insists it was self-defence.

Korban's case

The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and tax police are searching the offices and homes of business partners, friends and family members of businessman Hennadiy Korban, a former deputy head of the Dnipropetrovsk regional state administration. According to Censor.net, the searches are held in the cases on tax evasion by various unrelated companies. Korban accused the authorities of putting pressure on his long-time friend and Dnipro mayor Borys Filatov to drop out of local elections.

Poroshenko's paintings

The Kyiv court of appeal has upheld the complaint filed by the lawyer of the fifth president of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, Ihor Holovan, and lifted the arrest on the paintings from his family collection, which are exhibited in the National Centrea of Folk Culture "Ivan Honchar Museum", according to Ukrainian News.

Survey

Only 20% of Ukrainians believe that Ukraine is moving in the right direction whereas 68% are of the opposite opinion, a survey by the Rating pollster has found out. If a parliamentary election were held this weekend, almost 26% of decided voters would support the president's Servant of the People party, 17.6% would vote for pro-Russian Opposition Platform-For Life, 15.7% for ex-President Petro Poroshenko's European Solidarity, and 10.4% for Yuliya Tymoshenko's Fatherland.

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