Europe

Russia says Ukraine drone hit Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant

MOSCOW, April 7, 2024 (AFP) – Russia on Sunday said that a Ukraine drone attack hit the Moscow-controlled Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) urged restraint. The Zaporizhzhia atomic plant, Europe’s largest, has been occupied by Russian forces since the start of their 2022 Ukraine offensive. “The Ukrainian Armed Forces attacked the dome of the sixth power unit of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP),” the Moscow-controlled management of the […]

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Russian flood situation ‘critical’ in Orsk after burst dam

MOSCOW, April 7, 2024 (AFP) – A major flood in the city of Orsk that forced several thousand people to evacuate after a dam burst has created a “critical” situation, Emergency Situations Minister Alexander Kurenkov said on Sunday. “A critical situation has developed in the city of Orsk” in the southern Urals close to the border with Kazakhstan, he said from the city of 200,000 people. More than 4,500 homes have been flooded and more […]

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Russia evacuates almost 4,500 people after dam burst

MOSCOW, April 6, 2024 (AFP) – Russia on Saturday said it had evacuated almost 4,500 people in the Orenburg region in the southern Urals due to flooding after a dam burst. Emergency services worked through the night after a dam burst in the city of Orsk, near the border with Kazakhstan, on Friday. The press service of the Orenburg governor said “4,402 people, including 1,100 children” had been evacuated and more than 6,000 homes were […]

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Russian governor in intensive care after stabbing

MOSCOW, April 5, 2024 (AFP) – The governor of Russia’s far northern Murmansk region has been taken to intensive care after being stabbed by a man on Thursday evening, local authorities said. Andrey Chibis, 45, was knifed in the stomach outside a cultural centre in the town of Apatity, where he had been holding a meeting with local residents. He is currently in “the intensive care and resuscitation department” of a hospital in the city […]

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NATO urged to ensure Ukraine arms flow as 100-bn-euro fund floated

By Max DELANY BRUSSELS, Belgium, April 3, 2024 (AFP) – NATO foreign ministers on Wednesday debated the creation of a 100-billion-euro fund for Ukraine, as alliance chief Jens Stoltenberg urged them to guarantee long-term arms supplies for Kyiv’s outgunned forces. Stoltenberg pitched the five-year fund for Kyiv and a plan to deepen NATO’s involvement in delivering weapons in a bid to shield support in the face of a potential return by Donald Trump to the […]

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Finland extends Russian border closure indefinitely

HELSINKI, April 4, 2024 (AFP) – Finland on Thursday said it would extend its border closure with Russia “until further notice”, after it was shut in response to a surge in migrant crossings. Finland, which joined the NATO military alliance following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, says the surge in asylum seekers has been orchestrated by Russia, a charge that Moscow has denied. The two neighbours share a 1,340-kilometre (830-mile) border. The Nordic country closed the […]

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22 arrests, Italian villas seized in vast EU fraud swoop

BRUSSELS, Belgium, April 4, 2024 (AFP) – A coordinated police swoop across Europe on Thursday netted 22 arrests and saw villas and luxury cars seized in Italy, in a probe into an alleged 600-million-euro ($650 million) fraud of EU Covid funds, officials said. Dozens of raids took place in Italy, Austria, Romania and Slovakia as authorities moved in against a suspected criminal network that carried out the alleged fraud between 2021 and 2023, the European […]

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12-year-old killed, two seriously injured in Finland school shooting

HELSINKI, April 2, 2024 (AFP) – Finnish police said a 12-year-old child died and two others seriously wounded after a peer opened fire Tuesday at a school just north of the capital Helsinki. “Today, after 9:00 am, a shooting incident took place at a school … in which a sixth grader, a student of the school, died,” Ilkka Koskimaki, police chief of Eastern Uusimaa police department, told a press conference, adding two others were “seriously […]

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Ukraine shelling kills woman in Russian border village

MOSCOW, March 31, 2024 (AFP) – Ukrainian shelling killed a woman in the Russian border village of Dunayka on Sunday, the latest in a series of deadly cross-border attacks by Kyiv, the local governor said. Since Moscow launched its assault on Ukraine two years ago, Russia’s Belgorod region on the frontier has been repeatedly targeted by what authorities say is indiscriminate Ukrainian bombardment, which has increased in recent months. “The village of Dunayka, in the […]

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France police find ‘bones’ of toddler missing in the Alps: prosecutor

  MARSEILLE, March 31, 2024 (AFP) – French investigators have found and identified the “bones” of a toddler whose disappearance last summer in a tiny village in the French Alps shocked the nation, a prosecutor said Sunday. Emile, two-and-a-half years old, was staying with his grandparents for the first day of the summer holidays when he vanished on July 8 last year. Two neighbours last saw him in the late afternoon walking alone on a […]

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Russia arrests gay bar owner amid ongoing crackdown

MOSCOW, March 31, 2024 (AFP) – The owner of a popular gay bar in the Russian city of Orenburg has been arrested for “extremism”, rights groups said Sunday, as authorities crack down on the LGBTQ community. Police and local nationalists raided the Pose bar in Orenburg earlier this month during a drag show, later arresting its administrator and artistic director in the first criminal case of its kind. The bar’s owner was detained three days […]

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Dutch hostage drama over, armed suspect arrested

By Nick Gammon EDE, Netherlands, March 30, 2024 (AFP) – A hostage drama in the Netherlands that lasted several hours ended without bloodshed on Saturday as all four hostages were freed and police took the suspect into custody. Authorities said there was no reason to suspect a “terrorist motive” for the ordeal, which took place at a night spot popular with young people in the central Dutch town of Ede. Police said they received reports […]

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