Europe

KOUVARAS, Greece, July 17 (Reuters) - Villagers were ordered to leave their homes and hundreds of children were evacuated from a summer camp as two separate wildfires fanned by strong winds damaged houses to the southeast and west of Athens on Monday, authorities said.

The blaze that broke out in the village of Kouvaras, about 27 km (17 miles) from the Greek capital, spread fast amid erratic winds, a Greek fire service official said.

About 200 firemen with the help of around 20 soldiers, 68 engines and 16 aircraft were trying to control the flames, the official added.

July 17 (Reuters) - Powerful solar flare activity is forecast for Monday which may interfere with short-wave communications, Russian scientists said after three flares were observed on the sun on Sunday.

The Fedorov Institute of Applied Geophysics in Moscow said class X flares were possible, including proton flares, and short-wave radio conditions were expected to deteriorate.

X-class flares are the largest explosions in the solar systems and can create long-lasting radiation storms. Proton flares are a storm of solar energetic particles, composed chiefly of proton.

An attack before dawn Monday damaged part of a bridge linking Russia to Moscow-annexed Crimea that is a key supply route for Kremlin forces in the war with Ukraine, forcing the span’s temporary closure for a second time in less than a year. Two people were killed and their daughter was injured.

Vehicle traffic on the Kerch Bridge came to a standstill, while rail traffic across the 19-kilometer (12-mile) span also was halted for about six hours.

The strike was carried out by two Ukrainian maritime drones, Russia’s National Anti-Terrorist Committee said.

LONDON (AP) — Russia has suspended a wartime deal designed to move grain from Ukraine to parts of the world where millions are going hungry.

The Black Sea Grain Initiative, brokered by the U.N. and Turkey, has allowed 32.9 million metric tons (36.2 million tons) of food to be exported from Ukraine since August, more than half to developing countries, according to the Joint Coordination Center in Istanbul.

More mercenaries from Russia’s Wagner military contractor rolled into Belarus Monday, a monitoring group said, continuing their relocation to the ex-Soviet nation following last month’s short-lived mutiny.

Belaruski Hajun, a Belarusian activist group that monitors troops movements in Belarus, said that a convoy of about 20 vehicles carrying Russian flags and Wagner insignia entered the country Monday heading toward a field camp that Belarusian authorities had offered to the company.

The group said it was a third Wagner convoy entering the country since last week.

ROME (AP) — Italian health officials intensified heat warnings as southern Europe began a brutally hot week on Monday with temperatures expected to top 40 C — or 104 F — on a continent already overburdened by tourists.

SAINTE-CROIX du VERDON, France (AP) — At the pristine southern French lake of Sainte-Croix-du-Verdon, tourists in pedal boats and on white water rafts — and the businesses that welcome them — have been buoyed by generous rainfall and good water management this spring.

After a prolonged drought last summer, then another in the winter that followed, the once cracked lakebeds are now abundantly watered. Dams are releasing water into reservoirs on a consistent schedule for activities in the lake.

But tour operators are still wary.

HAMPTON, Ga. (AP) — Officers on Sunday shot and killed a man wanted in four weekend killings near Atlanta during an exchange of gunfire, with a sheriff’s deputy and two police officers wounded while trying to take the suspect into custody, authorities said.

Officials said Andre Longmore was shot during an intense search for the 40-year-old suspect. The exchange of gunfire came a day after Saturday morning’s shootings rocked a bucolic subdivision in Hampton, south of Georgia’s main city.

MOSCOW, July 16. /TASS/: Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that the Ukrainian army has had no success since the start of its counteroffensive.

"All the enemy's attempts to break through our defense - which is a task including the use of strategic reserves - they have not succeeded since the offensive began. The enemy has no success!" the president said in an interview for the program "Moscow. Kremlin. Putin", a fragment of which was posted on the Telegram channel of host Pavel Zarubin.

LUGANSK, July 16. /TASS/: Ukrainian troops hit a storage facility with ammonal and trotyl used in the mining sector near the village of Yubileiny in a Lugansk suburb, Andrey Marochko, a retired colonel of the People’s Militia of the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR), said on Sunday.

"A shell hit the so-called dynamite depot located near Lugansk’s village of Yubileiny. There is a Mashchinskaya mine in the vicinity and a storage facility with ammonal and trotyl, which are used in the mining sector," he told TASS.