Europe

VILNIUS, Lithuania, 12 Jul (NNN-XINHUA) – Leaders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), yesterday failed to set a timetable for Ukraine’s membership of the alliance, following the first day of the NATO summit in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius.

Speaking at a press conference, NATO Secretary-General, Jens Stoltenberg, said, allies have agreed on a package of three elements to “bring Ukraine closer to NATO.” However, he clarified that an invitation for Ukraine to join the alliance will be issued “when allies agree and conditions are met.”

LONDON, July 12 (Reuters) - Chinese state-linked hackers have secretly accessed email accounts at around 25 organisations including government agencies in a sweeping cyberespionage campaign, Microsoft said on Wednesday.

In an interview with ABC television, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the United States had detected a breach of federal government accounts "fairly rapidly" and had managed to prevent further breaches.

KYIV, July 12 (Reuters) - Ukraine on Wednesday reported some success in fighting near the Russian-occupied eastern city of Bakhmut as its troops press on with a counteroffensive against Moscow's forces.

Heavy fighting and Russian drone strikes on Ukrainian cities have continued while President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is in Vilnius for meetings with NATO leaders who are holding a summit in the Lithuanian capital.

LONDON, July 12 (Reuters) - It started as a local dispute over China's plans to build a new embassy next to the Tower of London - pitting the world's second biggest superpower against an inner-city borough that blocked the project.

Just over seven months later, it is escalating into a diplomatic standoff that, officials from both countries told Reuters, is undermining efforts to repair their badly damaged relations.

VILNIUS, July 12 (Reuters) - NATO leaders at this week's summit in Vilnius said Ukraine should be able to join the military alliance at some point in the future but dashed Kyiv's hopes for an immediate invitation.

The guarded statement on Ukraine's path into NATO irked President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. But after 16 months of war since Russia launched what it calls its special military operation, his country is still set to come away from the summit with some tangible rewards.

Below are some of the main commitments pledged to Ukraine in connection with the summit.

MOSCOW, July 12 (Reuters) - Russia is decaying in a potent brew of absurdity and repression that is comparable to the Leonid Brezhnev-era of the Soviet Union, Oleg Orlov, one of the Russia's most respected human rights campaigners, told Reuters.

Orlov, 70, is on trial in Russia for articles he published last year which cast Russia as a "fascist" state seeking revenge for the perceived humiliations of the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. He faces up to three years in prison.

BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union on Wednesday slapped a $475 million fine on U.S. biotech giant Illumina for buying cancer-screening company Grail without regulators’ approval, the latest setback for the deal.

Illumina announced an $7.1 billion acquisition of Grail in 2020, but the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm and top antitrust enforcer, said the company broke EU merger rules by completing the deal without its consent. The 27-nation bloc announced last year that it was blocking the acquisition, saying it would hurt competitors.

LONDON (AP) — Concerns are growing that Russia will not extend a United Nations-brokered deal that allows grain to flow from Ukraine to parts of the world struggling with hunger, with ships no longer heading to the war-torn country’s Black Sea ports and food exports dwindling.

Turkey and the U.N. negotiated the breakthrough accord last summer to ease a global food crisis, along with a separate agreement with Russia to facilitate shipments of its food and fertilizer. Moscow insists it’s still facing hurdles, though data shows it has been exporting record amounts of wheat.

PARIS (AP) — Widespread riots in France sparked by the police killing of a teenager with North African roots have revealed the depth of discontent roiling poor neighborhoods — and given a new platform to the increasingly emboldened far right.

BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union’s parliament on Wednesday backed a major plan to protect nature and fight climate change in a cliffhanger vote that had the 27-nation bloc’s global green credentials at stake.

After weeks of intense lobbying against the plan, the legislature still supported the general outlines of a European Commission bill in a razor-thin 324-312 vote with 12 abstentions.