List of All Articles with Tag 'europe'

The top-ranking US military officer said time is running short before bad weather hampers Ukraine’s ground operations for

Morocco authorities searched for survivors as aid offers poured in from around the world following a powerful earthquake

A Westport-bound train has struck a car at a level crossing in County Mayo, injuring two people.

The US signed an agreement with India, Middle Eastern countries and the European Union aimed at connecting them

Russian President Vladimir Putin has lost 600 of his troops in one day, according to Kyiv, while his conservative party’s headquarters in Ukraine was destroyed on Friday. The general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces is estimating that 600 of Moscow’s personnel were killed on Friday, bringing the total lost since February 2022 to 268,140. Meanwhile, the headquarters of the United Russia political party in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian city of Polohy was destroyed in an attack on the same day, according to the mayor of Melitopol, reported the Kyiv Independent. Ivan Fedorov said on the Telegram messaging app that local residents described Russians as “burned out” of the headquarters amid the “hellish pseudo-elections”. Alluding to casualties, he said: “Some went straight to the morgue.” This comes as a British national who went to fight in Ukraine was found dead in water with his hands tied behind his back, reported the BBC. Jordan Chadwick, a 31-year-old from Burnley in Lancashire, had served in the British armed forces from 2011 to 2015. Meanwhile, Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky slammed Putin, accusing him of orchestrating the plane crash that killed mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin and several members of his inner circle last month. Read More Elon Musk sparks fury by admitting he thwarted Ukrainian drone attack on Putin’s naval fleet Japan's foreign minister to visit war-torn Ukraine with business leaders to discuss reconstruction What are depleted uranium shells? The controversial armour-piercing munitions being used in Ukraine

What do a Bugatti supercar, a Hilton hotel and the Chagos Islands have in common? They all feature

France is broadly supportive of stopping girls wearing the robe, but many Muslim women are unhappy.

(Adds dropped word "been", para 4) By Tim Hepher PARIS (Reuters) -The European Space Agency on Friday welcomed a deal

Rescue teams are set to begin an attempt to evacuate a American explorer trapped 3,400 feet (1,040m) deep underground in a cave in southern Turkey. Mark Dickey, a 40-year-old experienced caver, suddenly became ill with bleeding in his degistive tract earlier this month during an international exploration mission in the Morca cave in the Taurus mountains. More than 150 rescuers from across Europe have been working to save him since. The attempt to bring Mr Dickey out of the cave is expected to begin on Saturday and could take three or four days, rescuers said. The way out is being divided into seven sections, each given to a team from a different country, due to the complexity of the operation. This is regarded as one of the most difficult cave rescues ever. Follow the latest in our live blog here "This is a difficult operation. It would take a [healthy] person 16 hours to come out. This operation will last at least three or four days," Cenk Yildiz, a regional official from Turkey's disaster relief agency, AFAD, told the IHA news agency. "Our priority is health. Our aim is to conclude this operation without anyone coming under any danger." Tulga Sener, the head of the rescue commission medical unit, told Reuters that Mr Dickey's health condition was stable and his vital signs normal, adding that three doctors would attend to him on his way up. It is believed that Mr Dickey will have to take significant rest at frequent points on the way out. Explosives will need to be used to expand some of the more narrow points of the cave to allow safe passge said Recep Salci, the head of search and rescue for AFAD, with the aim of bringing Mr Dickey up a stretcher. Rescuers will use a "security belt" system to lift him through the cave's narrowest openings. Doctors gave Mr Dickey IV fluids and 4 litres of blood inside the cave, he said. More than 30 rescuers were inside the cave on Friday afternoon, and teams comprised of a doctor and three or four others take turns staying with the American at all times, Mr Salci said. "Our aim is to bring him out and to have him hospitalised as soon as possible," Mr Salci said. Members of Italy's National Alpine and Speleological Rescue Team joined rescue teams from Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Italy, Poland and Turkey late Thursday. A Turkish helicopter was on standby near the entrance of the cave, Turkish media reports said. The Italian organisation said six of their rescuers, including a doctor and nurse, reached Dickey during the night. The team planned to work to keep him stable for 15 to 20 hours before being replaced by another team. Small camps set up at different levels inside the cave gave doctors, nurses and technicians a place to rest, the group said. Mr Dickey recorded a video message that was released by Turkish authorities late on Thursday. "Hi, I'm Mark Dickey from nearly a thousands metres," Mr Dickey said in the message, dressed in a red puffer jacket and using a headlamp. "As you can see, I'm up, I'm alert, I'm talking. But I'm not healed on the inside yet, so I'm going to need a lot of help to get out of here," he added. The caving world is a really tight-knit group ,and it's amazing to see how many people have responded on the surface," Mr Dickey said in the video. "I do know that the quick response of the Turkish government to get the medical supplies that I need, in my opinion, saved my life. I was very close to the edge." The New Jersey-based cave rescue group that Mr Dickey is affiliated with said he had been bleeding and losing fluid from his stomach but had stopped vomiting and ate for the first time in days. Mr Dickey added that the response to his medical issues is "a great opportunity to show how well the international world can work together". Footage from the operation showed rescuers setting up shelters in the cavity where he was found and chatting with Dickey. Other teams from Turkey and elsewhere set up camp outside the country's third-deepest cave. Mr Dickey has been described by the European Association of Cave Rescuers as "a highly trained caver and a cave rescuer himself" who is well known as a cave researcher, or speleologist, from his participation in many international expeditions. He is secretary of the association's medical committee. The researcher was on an expedition mapping the 4,186-foot (1,276-metre) deep Morca cave system for the Anatolian Speleology Group Association, according to Yusuf Ogrenecek of the Speleological Federation of Turkey. He initially became ill on 2 September, but it took until the morning of to notify others who were above ground. Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report Read More Two men questioned in Lebanon at Turkey's request over 2019 escape of former Nissan tycoon Sunak pledges to ‘put pressure’ on Moscow as he arrives in India for summit Helicopters airlift residents to safety from deadly floods in central Greece What is a speleologist? AP Week in Pictures: Europe and Africa Is it India? Is it Bharat? Speculations abound as government pushes for the country’s Sanskrit name

Vladimir Putin orchestrated the killing of Wagner mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin thanks to his own weakness, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has said. The Ukrainian president made the off-hand remark during a conference in Kyiv on Friday, without providing any additional evidence. Mr Prigozhin died in an unexplained crash when a plane carrying himself and some of his top lieutenants went down when flying between Moscow and St Petersburg in late August. Mr Prigozhin offered the most severe challenge to the Russian president’s authority in more than 20 years in power when he and his Wagner fighters rose up against Moscow in June. The mutiny began when Mr Prigozhin’s forces left their base in southern Russia and marched on Moscow. It prompted the Kremlin chief to accuse Mr Prigozhin of "treason" and a "stab in the back". Mr Prigozhin and his troops were eventually halted 24 hours later, about 125 miles from the Russian capital, when a deal was brokered between the Kremlin and Mr Prigozhin by the Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko. See our live blog for the latest developments in Ukraine Mr Prigozhin had been in a public feud with Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu and chief of the general staff Valery Gerasimov for months about the direction of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which is now in its 18th month. There has been a crackdown on dissent against the war across Russian society, with dozens facing prison sentences. Western leaders have suggested that little of note happens in Russia without Mr Putin’s sign-off and that he would be unlikely to let the embarrassment of the mutiny go without sending a message to others looking to undermine his presidency. Mr Zelensky said on Friday: "The fact that he killed Prigozhin - at least that’s the information we all have, not any other kind - that also speaks to his rationality, and about the fact that he is weak.” He made the statement in answer to another question about the Russian president. The Kremlin says all possible causes of the crash will be investigated, including the possibility of foul play. It has called the suggestion that Putin ordered the deaths of Mr Prigozhin and his men an "absolute lie". Many critics of Mr Putin have died in unclear circumstances during his 23 years in power, or narrowly escaped dying. Russia’s most recognisable opposition figure, Alexei Navalny, is facing decades in prison over various charges that are widely considered to be politically motivated. He was arrested in 2021 upon returning to Moscow after recuperating in Germany from what is believed to have been nerve agent poisoning. He has blamed that poisoning on the Kremlin, as did a number of Western nations. The Kremlin has denied involvement. Meanwhile, Mr Zelensky’s hometown Kryvyi Rih was one of several sites in Ukraine to be hit by Russian missiles overnight into Friday. Three people were also killed after a Russian bomb struck the village of Odradokamianka in the Kherson region of southern Ukraine. The strikes come as Ukraine is trying to push back Russian troops and reclaim its territory as part of a summer offensive. However, Mr Zelensky said that his nation is finding it harder and slower to secure sanctions on Russia and weapon supplies to help fend off Moscow's forces. He said Ukraine's three-month-old counteroffensive would make faster gains in the south and east if Kyiv's military received more powerful weapons. "The war is slowing down. This is true, we recognise this. All the processes are becoming harder and slowing down: from sanctions to the delivery of weapons," he said. Read More Wagner Group set to be declared a terrorist organisation The UK says it will declare Russia’s Wagner mercenary group a banned terrorist organization Wagner to be declared a terrorist organisation, Home Office says Sunak pledges to ‘put pressure’ on Moscow as he arrives in India for summit Cuba arrests 17 for allegedly helping recruit some of its citizens to fight for Russia in Ukraine Ukraine-Russia war – live: Four dead as Putin’s forces strike Zelensky’s hometown and Kherson

Spanish state prosecutors have filed a lawsuit against Luis Rubiales for sexual assault and coercion for kissing a player on the lips without her consent after the Women’s World Cup final, the country’s prosecutors’ office said Friday. Rubiales, the now-suspended president of the Spanish soccer federation, kissed Jenni Hermoso on the lips during the awards ceremony after Spain beat England to win the title on Aug. 20 in Sydney, Australia. ___ AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer

Belgium acknowledged Thursday that its major rail gateway, the Brussels Midi Station, has become a festering sore of drug abuse, poverty and violence that is a major stain on a nation preparing to take on the presidency of the European Union. The government vowed to tackle the problem, but some critics say action is coming way too late, while others say that any cleanup operation will only push the big-city problems to other neighbourhoods. Belgium, one of the wealthiest nations in the world, with a major tourism industry, has neglected the once-stately Midi Station for decades. It has become a symbol of dysfunctional government as increasingly many of the 160,000 daily commuters and tourists no longer fully feel safe. The increasing spread of crack cocaine and open dealing and use of drugs in the neighbourhood over the past year have exacerbated an already bad situation to the point that petty theft, fights and harassment of tourists have become everyday headline news in the nation of 11.5 million. Belgium takes on the presidency of the 27-nation EU in January for six months. Governments who hold the presidency typically use the opportunity to bask in the global attention to promote their nation. Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said at a news conference Thursday that he felt he had to take action and no longer leave security at such a key time to a warren of local authorities who had proven they were not up to the task. “The challenge is one of security that we owe to everyone passing through Brussels. It is about the livable conditions in the neighbourhood, and of course, it is about the image of Brussels and the image of our nation,” he said Thursday. As an immediate measure, it was announced that a special police station will be set up at the existing station at the train station to make interventions easier. But far more fundamental issues are at stake, said historian, former politician and Brussels pundit Luckas Vander Taelen. “Nobody has done anything for years. So this problem gets always worse. And that’s what happens today — everybody seems concerned. But I wonder what is going to change here," he said. Vander Taelen blamed Belgium's Byzantine political structure of overlapping local, regional and national authorities who he said all too often blame each other instead of actually doing something in unison. “There are too many levels of power in Brussels and that paralyses everything,” he said. As criticism mounted, police organized highly publicized raids through the massive railway station, picking up and detaining several people while a cleaning team did away with much of the muck and dirt. Those are only stop-gap solutions though, said Ariane Dierickx of the l'Ilot aid group, which provides services for the homeless and needy. “It was shocking to see that all these people that have been rejected by society are being picked up by police vans while they are not criminals,” she said. “It shows how inadequate the response is.” Dierickx said it would only move the problem to other areas. Belgium's image is being soiled in other places too, De Croo's critics say, since problems at the Nord Station, another major train hub in the capital, haven't been much better. One of the major issues has been the rise of drug trafficking and its accompanying violence in Belgium. The northern port of Antwerp has turned into a main gateway for Latin American cocaine cartels into the continent and cocaine seizures there have more than doubled in the past half decade, according to customs officials. Because of that, relatively inexpensive cocaine has boomed in Brussels and crack cocaine has become a massive security issue, especially around the Midi station. Read More Carrasco dismisses criticism of human rights in Saudi Arabia after transfer to Al Shabab Swimmers enjoy sunshine and a dip at lido celebrating 100th anniversary World War I memorials in France and Belgium are vying again to become UNESCO World Heritage sites Belgium imposes a ban on shelter for single men seeking asylum to make place for families The Ukraine war, propaganda-style, is coming to Russian movie screens. Will people watch? The Ukraine war, propaganda-style, is coming to Russian movie screens. Will people watch?