Europe

MOSCOW, July 1. /TASS/: The potential deployment of nuclear weapons to Poland may prompt the country to use them, Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev told TASS.

Commenting on Poland’s ambitions to take part in NATO’s Nuclear Sharing program, he said, "The only danger arising from the request to deploy nuclear weapons to Poland is that such weapons will be used."

Earlier, Polish Prime Minister Morawiecki announced that Warsaw would like to join NATO’s Nuclear Sharing program amid Russia’s intentions to deploy tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus.

MOSCOW, July 1. /TASS/: Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky signed a decree on Saturday imposing sanctions for 10 years on 192 individuals, mostly Russian nationals.

The latest sanctions also affect 291 legal entities, including Russian factories and businesses. Also, Belarusian, Georgian and Kazakh companies were blacklisted.

The corresponding decree, putting into effect the sanctions decision by Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, was published on the Ukrainian president’s website.

BERLIN, July 1(Reuters) - Germany's coalition government is at odds over whether to bow to British pressure and approve the production of Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jets for Saudi Arabia, the newspaper Welt Am Sonntag reported on Saturday, citing anonymous sources.

A deal struck by Riyadh and BAE Systems (BAES.L) five years ago for the arms maker to supply 48 such jets was put on hold due to the war in Yemen, where Saudi-led Arab forces intervened in 2015.

A third of the components for the jets come from Germany, industry sources told Reuters at the time.

SARAJEVO, July 1 (Reuters) - Bosnia's international peace overseer, Christian Schmidt, on Saturday annulled two laws that Bosnian Serb parliament had adopted defying the constitution and the terms of a peace deal that ended the Balkan country's war in the 1990s.

Schmidt, who as international High Representative in Bosnia has powers to impose laws and sack obstructive officials, also amended a law so that those seen as attacking the state institutions can be criminally prosecuted.

AMSTERDAM, July 1 (Reuters) - Dutch King Willem-Alexander on Saturday apologised for the Netherlands' historic involvement in slavery and the effects that it still has today.

The king was speaking at a ceremony marking the 160th anniversary of the legal abolition of slavery in the Netherlands, including its former colonies in the Caribbean.

"On this day that we remember the Dutch history of slavery, I ask forgiveness for this crime against humanity," he said. He said racism in Dutch society remains a problem and not everyone would support his apology.

PARIS, July 1 (Reuters) - More than 1,300 people were arrested in France during a fourth night of rioting and President Emmanuel Macron cancelled a trip to Germany on Saturday as the funeral took place of teenager Nahel M, whose shooting by police sparked nationwide unrest.

Macron's government deployed 45,000 police officers as well as armoured vehicles overnight to tackle the worst crisis for his leadership since the "Yellow Vest" protests which paralysed much of France in late 2018.

July 1 (Reuters) - U.S. CIA Director William Burns said on Saturday that the armed mutiny by mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was a challenge to the Russian state that had shown the corrosive effect of President Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine.

Putin this week thanked the army and security forces for averting what he said could have turned into a civil war, and has compared the mutiny to the chaos that plunged Russia into two revolutions in 1917.

LONDON (AP) — More than 150 executives are urging the European Union to rethink the world’s most comprehensive rules for artificial intelligence, saying Friday that upcoming regulations will make it harder for companies in Europe to compete with rivals overseas, especially when it comes to the technology behind systems like ChatGPT.

BERLIN (AP) — Leaders of Germany’s main opposition bloc called Friday for voters turned off by the government to back them in two major state elections this fall, arguing that they are the best bet for stability while voting for a burgeoning far-right party would bring no change.

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — The European Union’s border agency is seeking “clarifications and information” from Greece’s coast guard on two alleged cases of migrants who crossed by boat being illegally deported back to Turkey, a European official said Friday.

The official said Frontex’s executive director Hans Leijtens wrote to a senior police official representing Greece on the Frontex management board, requesting a reply by July 10. The agency helps patrol EU member Greece’s eastern borders.