World News

By Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen

UTOEYA, Norway (Reuters) – NATO members are working closely with defence companies to ensure Ukraine gets more supplies of weapons and equipment to be prepared for the long haul in its war with Russia, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Thursday.

“We are providing a lot of support but we need to do even more and be prepared for the long haul,” Stoltenberg told Reuters in an interview.

“Therefore we’re also now in close contact and working closely with the defence industry to produce more and to deliver more of different types of ammunition, weapons and capabilities,” he said.

In recent months, the United States and other Western countries have begun shipping more advanced conventional weapons systems to Ukraine, including high mobility artillery rocket systems (HIMARS) that offer a longer range and more precision.

Stoltenberg said separately in a speech in Norway to local Labour party activists on Thursday that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which Moscow calls a “special military operation”, had created the most dangerous moment for Europe since World War Two and that Russia could not be allowed to win.

He also accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of engaging in “reckless and dangerous” rhetoric regarding the potential use of nuclear arms.

While NATO members are not directly involved in the war, NATO is closely involved in coordinating the Western response to the invasion.

Stoltenberg reiterated his position that the war would likely end only after negotiations.

“We know most wars end at the negotiating table. We also know that the outcome of those negotiations will be totally dependent on the strength on the battlefield,” he told Reuters.

“It’s not for me to tell Ukraine what those terms exactly should be. It’s for me and NATO to support them to strengthen their hands, so we maximize the likelihood of an acceptable solution,” reiterating similar comments he made in June.

The war has led previously non-aligned Finland and Sweden to seek NATO membership, with the request so far ratified by 23 of the 30 member states, including the United States.

“This is the fastest accession protocol in NATO’s modern history. I expect the other seven remaining allies to do the same,” Stoltenberg said.

He said Turkey’s demand for extraditions from Sweden and Finland of terrorism suspects would have to be decided by courts in the two Nordic nations.

“The rule of law applies in Finland and Sweden,” Stoltenberg said.

(Reporting by Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen; Writing by Terje Solsvik; Editing by Susan Fenton)

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By Rod Nickel

WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) – Canada will send up to 225 personnel to the United Kingdom to train Ukrainian military recruits, starting with the first troops next week, Canadian Defence Minister Anita Anand said on Thursday.

Ukraine has been forced to cede some territory in the east of the country in the face of a Russian offensive, and the head of the NATO military alliance said Moscow must not be allowed to win the war, which began with Russia’s invasion in February.

The Canadian Armed Forces has trained more than 33,000 Ukrainian military and security personnel since 2015, but paused aspects of the training effort since February.

“We have now entered a new and very dangerous phase of this conflict with (Russia) engaging in a protracted attempt to inflict long-term damage on Ukraine and its people,” Anand said in Toronto.

“I am therefore announcing today that we are fulfilling our promise to resume large-scale training.”

The deployment will last four months. Most of the soldiers will come from 3rd Battalion Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, based in Edmonton, Alberta.

The Ukrainian Canadian Congress, a group representing the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada, welcomed Canada’s resumption of training, saying Canadian expertise will greatly benefit Ukraine.

The Netherlands and New Zealand have also committed military trainers to the U.K.-led mission.

Canadian-led training, to take place at a military base in southeast England, will include weapons handling, first aid and patrol tactics.

Last month, Canada said it would send 39 General Dynamics-made armored vehicles https://www.reuters.com/world/canada-send-39-armored-vehicles-ukraine-this-summer-2022-07-07 to Ukraine this summer.

(Reporting by Rod Nickel and Ismail Shakil; Editing by Daniel Wallis)

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BERLIN (Reuters) – More than 100 firefighters on Thursday battled a fire at an ammunitions dump in western Berlin, using water cannons and an army robot to try to contain the blaze that has triggered explosions and was still spreading, officials said.

The fire service set up a perimeter zone 1,000 metres (0.6 miles) from the centre of the fire, which it said had spread across 15,000 square metres of Grunewald, a forested area bordered by upscale villas and swimming lakes, as well as the sealed-off ammunitions dump.

Firefighters had been unable to reach the source of the blaze due to several explosions at the bomb disposal site, and they were using the army robot to obtain images of the area.

The firefighters laid hoses through the forest from nearby rivers and lakes, and an armoured vehicle supplied by the Bundeswehr was cutting a fire break through the forest at the southern edge of the perimeter zone.

“Everything is prepared at the borders of the perimeter. That is where we want to stop it,” a spokesperson for the fire service told Reuters.

Berlin frequently carries out bomb disposal operations as explosives are still being discovered from World War Two. The Grunewald site is used to defuse such old munitions, as well as weapons and fireworks, a fire department spokesperson said.

It has been in operation since 1950 and is equipped with fire alarm systems and a firebreak that is several metres wide, police said on Twitter. The explosives stored there were being continuously sprinkled with water.

The fire service said it was unclear what had caused the fire but that several buildings at the bomb disposal site were ablaze by the time firefighters arrived.

No residential areas were affected by the fire, and no evacuations had been ordered.

Berlin is experiencing a heatwave. Weather service DWD forecast Thursday as one of the hottest days of the year with temperatures expected to reach between 34 and 38 degrees Celsius.

Germany has also been tackling wildfires at its border with Czech Republic for more than a week.

A dozen European countries have suffered major blazes this year, forcing thousands to evacuate and destroying homes and businesses. Countries including Italy, Spain and France still face extreme fire risk.

Data published on Thursday showed that this summer’s European wildfires have burned the second-largest area on record.

(Reporting by Rachel More and Maria Sheahan; Editing by Miranda Murray, Bill Rigby. John Stonestreet and Jane Merriman)

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TAIPEI (Reuters) – Taiwan’s government urged the island’s companies on Thursday to enhance their cybersecurity in the coming days as authorities were seeing a record number of attacks on their websites amid escalating tensions with China.

(Reporting By Yimou Lee; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)

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MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -Rescuers in Mexico, including dozens of soldiers, were working desperately on Wednesday to reach ten miners trapped in a flooded coal mine following the collapse of an inner wall, the ministry handling the disaster said.

Three miners had been rescued and hospitalized, the Security and Citizen Protection Ministry said in an update on the rescue efforts at the mine in the Sabinas municipality of the northern state of Coahuila.

Television footage showed family members outside the mine clamoring for information on the missing men.

“I hope we find them safe,” Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said earlier on Twitter. Lopez Obrador had said nine miners were likely to be trapped, but authorities revised the number later.

Some 92 soldiers were working at the scene, as well as specialists and rescue dogs, the president said.

The Labor Ministry said it had not received any complaints about safety at the mine, which began operations in January.

(Reporting by Carolina Pulice, Adriana Barrera and Valentine Hilaire; Editing by Brendan O’Boyle, Sandra Maler & Simon Cameron-Moore)

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By Lucy Craymer

WELLINGTON (Reuters) – New Zealand’s health ministry sees strong signs that the country’s latest COVID-19 wave has peaked, as new cases continue to trend lower.

The number of people in hospitals with COVID is also down on late July.

“The case rates have continued to trend lower across all regions for the second week running,” Andrew Old, head of the New Zealand Public Health Agency, told reporters on Thursday.

In the past seven days there were on average 6,142 new cases daily of COVID, down from a seven-day rolling average of 7,776 new cases a week earlier, according to Health Ministry data released on Thursday.

According to data issued on Thursday, 663 people are in hospital with COVID, well below levels seen in late July, when more than 800 people were in hospital with the virus.

Australia is seeing signs of an unexpectedly early peak in its winter outbreak. Australian Health Minister Mark Butler told Nine News that the government was quietly hoping cases had begun falling.

New Zealand’s latest modelling showed case numbers were at the lower end of what had been expected. The decline “strongly suggests we’ve reached a peak,” Old said.

The Omicron BA.5 sub-variant is driving the current wave in New Zealand, which has 5.1 million people. There have been 44,776 active cases in the past seven days.

(Reporting by Lucy Craymer; Editing by Bradley Perrett)

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PARIS (Reuters) -Several people were injured in a blast on Wednesday at military explosives producer Eurenco’s site in Bergerac, southwest France, a company official said.

The firm produces military explosives, propellants and fuels. It also makes explosives for civil use.

Emergency services erected a security perimeter and the Bergerac mayor’s office urged the public to stay away from the area.

The Dordogne prefecture said a fire was burning after the explosion.

The cause of the blast was not immediately clear. The company official said “several people” had been hurt but was unable to give a precise figures.

Emergency services remain at the scene, the Dordogne prefecture said.

(Reporting by GV De Clercq; editing by Richard Lough)

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REYKJAVIK, Iceland (AP) — A volcano in southwest Iceland began erupting Wednesday, the country’s meteorological authorities said.

The Icelandic Meteorological Office said the eruption is near the Fagradalsfjall mountain, 32 kilometers (20 miles) southwest of the capital, Reykjavik. A live video feed from the site shows molten lava spewing from a narrow fissure.

The eruption follows days of small earthquakes in the area and is close to Keflavik Airport, Iceland’s international air traffic hub.

An eruption in the same area last year — the first on Iceland’s Reykjanes Peninsula in almost 800 years — produced spectacular lava flows for several months.

Iceland, located above a volcanic hotspot in the North Atlantic, averages an eruption every four to five years.

The most disruptive in recent times was the 2010 eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano, which sent clouds of ash and dust into the atmosphere, interrupting air travel for days between Europe and North America because of concerns the ash could damage jet engines. More than 100,000 flights were grounded, stranding millions of passengers.

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COPENHAGEN (Reuters) – A volcanic eruption has resumed on the Fagradalsfjall mountain in southwest Iceland where an outbreak also took place last year, the Icelandic Meteorological Office said on Wednesday.

(Reporting by Nikolaj Skydsgaard, editing by Terje Solsvik)

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MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -Mexico’s attorney general’s office is investigating former President Enrique Pena Nieto for alleged money laundering, illicit enrichment, and illegal international transfers, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Tuesday.

The sources said Pena Nieto, who was president from 2012 to 2016, is the person identified as “Enrique P” in a statement from the attorney general’s office (FGR) on Tuesday.

Reuters was not able to immediately contact Pena Nieto for comment. He previously denied any wrongdoing when reports of an investigation by Mexico’s anti-money laundering unit emerged last month.

Pena Nieto has not been charged with a crime.

The Tuesday statement said the FGR was “developing investigation procedures” into various federal crimes. In the statement, the FGR said it was investigating crimes related to Spanish construction company OHL.

OHL did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside business hours.

In 2016, the Mexican unit of OHL was fined over inadequacies in its financial reporting. The company said then that there was no evidence of fraud.

At the time, OHL Mexico had been hit by corruption allegations over leaked recordings in which its executives appeared to be discussing overcharging the government for a highway concession.

The FGR said the investigations into money laundering and illegal international transfers stemmed from complaints by tax authorities.

In July, Mexico’s anti-money laundering unit asked the FGR to investigate millions of dollars’ worth of money transfers abroad addressed to Pena Nieto.

Pena Nieto addressed the accusations in a series of tweets at the time, saying, “I am certain that before the competent authorities I will be allowed to clarify any question about my assets and demonstrate their legality.”

(Reporting by Lizbeth Diaz; Writing by Valentine Hilaire and Brendan O’Boyle; Editing by Stephen Eisenhammer, Lincoln Feast and Leslie Adler)

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