Reuters

Cyprus has no need to tap the European pandemic credit line at present, the island's Finance Ministry said on Wednesday.
"The ESM credit line is also being evaluated but no political decision has been taken... to utilize the said instrument," it said in a statement to Reuters.

Demonstrators carry a giant puppet during a protest outside Greek Parliament in Athens on Thursday. Hundreds of musicians, actors and other art workers demanded more support for their sector. "We are here," read a message drawn in chalk on the street. In the northern city of Thessaloniki, musicians performed tied up in red-and-white cordon tape.

According to the Robert Koch Institute, the number of deaths increased by 246, Reuters reports.
A total of 2.349 people have died since the outbreak of the epidemic in Germany.

Two first cases of the new coronavirus were reported in Montenegro, TASS reported, citing authorities. Thus, there is no longer a country in Europe in which there is no cases of the virus, the agency notes.

Prime Minister Dusko Markovic told reporters that the patients were two women, born in 1948 and 1973 respectively. He described their condition as normal.

A child died and 47 migrants were rescued after their boat capsized off the Greek island of Lesvos, the Greek coastguard said on Monday.

At least 1,000 migrants have reached Greece's Eastern Aegean islands since Sunday morning, a police official told Reuters. [Reuters]

The coronavirus seems to be a "temporary shock" to the eurozone economy but the bloc's member states must be prepared to act in a coordinated way if the impact becomes a more long-lasting one, the chairman of eurozone finance ministers Mario Centeno said.

"It's the new risk and it's obviously a downside risk to our economies," Centeno told Reuters in an interview on Friday.

Greece's central bank is sticking to its economic growth projections so far as it monitors data after the country confirmed its first coronavirus infection, an official at the Bank of Greece told Reuters.
"We don't have any data that would warrant a change to our present projections for the moment," the official said, declining to be named. [Reuters]

Hollywood giant Paramount Pictures halts a planned three-week "Mission Impossible" shoot in Italy because of a coronavirus in Italy, AFP and Reuters reported.

The star of the series Tom Cruise has not yet traveled to Italy and does not intend to go there under the current circumstances.

Volkswagen is again postponing its decision on whether to build a car plant in Turkey, a source told Reuters on Tuesday, after the company halted the process in the wake of international criticism of the country's military operations in Syria.

"We still have time and can certainly do that [decision] by mid-year," the person familiar with the discussions said.

The head of the Eurogroup Mario Centeno said on Monday he expected the impact of the coronavirus outbreak on the eurozone economy to be temporary.
"We expect it to be a temporary effect," Centeno told reporters in Brussels, adding that the EU should carefully assess developments also for the long-term. [Reuters]