Europe

MINSK, June 27. /TASS/: Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, speaking in the wake of the latest events in Russia, has called for avoiding demands for not terminating the criminal case over calls for an armed mutiny.

CHISINAU, June 27. /TASS/: A little more than half of the residents of Moldova, whose constitution prescribes neutrality, are against the country joining NATO, according to a public opinion poll released Tuesday by WatchDog.MD, a nongovernmental organization close to the ruling Party of Action and Solidarity.

A representative sample of 1,121 respondents took part in the poll, which was conducted from June 10-19. The maximum margin of error, according to the authors, is 3%. Residents of Transnistria did not participate in the survey.

MINSK, June 27. /TASS/: Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has said that the attempted mutiny by the private military company Wagner will give an opportunity to the West to hit at the sore spots in Russia and Belarus.

"Let’s face the worst - that we are in for hard times," he said, the BelTA news agency reported.

Western officials are sure to draw certain conclusions from Wagner’s march on Moscow, the president said.

"They will coordinate their work, focus and hit at the sorest spots," Lukashenko said.

AMSTERDAM, June 27 (Reuters) - European policing agency Europol said on Tuesday that the takedown of Encrochat, an underground company that offered criminals supposedly secure encrypted communications, led to more than 6,500 arrests and 900 million euros ($980 million) in seized assets.

The system had an estimated 60,000 users when it shut down abruptly in June 2020, and Europol revealed the following month that law enforcement officials had been intercepting users' communications for months.

MILAN, June 27 (Reuters) - Dozens of people have been arrested in a new police raid against the 'Ndrangheta mafia that has revealed how its multiple illegal activities have spread as far as Austria and Germany, Italian authorities said on Tuesday.

Suspects, including politicians from the 'Ndrangheta home region of Calabria, face charges including mafia association, murder, extortion, fraud, rigging of public contracts, bribery and vote buying, police said in a statement.

PARIS, June 27 (Reuters) - France has conducted a maiden test of a prototype hypersonic glider, the country's defence procurement agency said, as it seeks to develop new missile technology capable of evading the most sophisticated air defences.

The agency said a sounding rocket carrying a VMAX hypersonic glider launched on Monday from the Biscarosse missile test site on the Bay of Biscay, southwestern France.

LONDON, June 27 (Reuters) - Prince Harry's lawyer said on Tuesday a British publisher’s failure to call witnesses such as Piers Morgan was a fatal blow to its defence against allegations brought by the royal and others of unlawful behaviour by its tabloid papers.

The prince and 100 others are suing Mirror Group Newspapers(MGN), the publisher of the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and Sunday People, over allegations of phone-hacking and unlawful information-gathering between 1991 and 2011.

ROME, June 27 (Reuters) - Italian authorities are looking for a tourist who scribbled graffiti on a wall of the Colosseum, with Culture Minister Gennaro Sangiuliano calling for exemplary punishment for the so-far unidentified man.

The tourist was caught in a video, posted on social media on Saturday, scratching his and his girlfriend's name with a key on an internal wall of the ancient Roman stone amphitheatre. He left the inscription "Ivan + Hayley 23".

He can be seen smiling, even as the author of the video, speaking in English and using swear words, reprimands him.

ROME, June 27 (Xinhua) -- The European Commission has finalized a proposal to provide member states with extra funding for agriculture, to offset damage from severe climate events.

The Commission said on Monday that the main part of the relief package amounts to 330 million euros (362 million U.S. dollars) for 22 EU member states. The two largest beneficiaries will be Spain, with 80.1 million euros (87.8 million U.S. dollars), and Italy with 60.5 million euros (66.3 million U.S. dollars).

MOSCOW, June 27 (Xinhua) -- In a national address on Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin urged Wagner forces to relocate to Belarus if they wanted, sign a contract with Russia's Defence Ministry, or return to their families.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the Russian intelligence services were investigating whether Western spy agencies played a role in the aborted mutiny, the TASS news agency reported.