Europe

MOSCOW, June 14. /TASS/: The extension of the grain deal is out of the question unless the package of agreements is enforced, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at the 46th session of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC), according to a statement released on the ministry’s website.

"I have to state again that any further extension is out of the question unless the Istanbul package [of agreements] is enforced as it was initiated by UN Secretary-General [Antonio Guterres], by July 17," he said.

MOSCOW, June 14. /TASS/: Russian President Vladimir Putin's speech at the plenary session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) on Friday will be length and will be followed by a discussion, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday.

"The President is preparing to take part in the plenary session of the SPIEF, which will be held on Friday. At the moment, the session is scheduled for 14:00. There will be a lengthy speech by the president, then a discussion," he said.

June 14 (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron said he will meet with Tesla (TSLA.O) CEO Elon Musk on Friday, the second time in just over a month, to promote France as a possible site for one of the electric vehicle (EV) maker's factories as well as to discuss tech regulation.

France has been courting Chinese EV giant BYD (002594.SZ) and Tesla to build factories in the country, officials had previously told Reuters but is competing with other EU countries such as Spain, which is in talks with Tesla too, a source told Reuters.

PRISTINA/BELGRADE, June 14 (Reuters) - Three Kosovo police officers were detained by Serbian forces on Wednesday but officials from Kosovo and Serbia gave different locations for the arrest, accusing each other of crossing the border illegally.

Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti demanded the release of the three officers. He said they had been arrested 300 metres inside Kosovan territory, near the border with Serbia.

"The entry of Serbian forces into the territory of Kosovo is aggression and aimed at escalation and destabilization," Kurti wrote on his Facebook page.

MOSCOW, June 14 (Reuters) - A close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday there was no reason for Moscow not to destroy its enemies' undersea communication cables given what he said was Western complicity in the Nord Stream pipeline blasts.

A sharp drop in pressure on both gas pipelines under the Baltic Sea was registered on Sept. 26 last year and seismologists detected explosions, triggering a wave of speculation about sabotage to one of Russia's most important energy corridors.

June 14 (Reuters) - Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has said his country has started taking delivery of Russian tactical nuclear weapons, some of which he said were three times more powerful than the atomic bombs the US dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

The deployment is Moscow's first move of such warheads - shorter-range less powerful nuclear weapons that could potentially be used on the battlefield - outside Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union.

BERLIN (AP) — The German government said Russia is the greatest security threat “for the foreseeable future” and advocated a balanced approach to China as it unveiled its first comprehensive national security strategy Wednesday.

The strategy was part of an effort to address what Germany views as growing military, economic and social risks to the country. Germany’s biggest opposition party criticized the government’s position as “anemic.”

BERLIN (AP) — A German opposition party on Wednesday launched a legal challenge against an electoral reform designed to reduce the size of the country’s increasingly bloated parliament.

The Barvarian center-right Christian Social Union is one of two opposition parties that have been vehemently critical of the legislation, which lawmakers approved in March, and see their future place in parliament at risk. They accuse Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-party coalition of cobbling together constitutionally dubious rules to favor itself.

LONDON (AP) — Lawmakers in Europe signed off Wednesday on the world’s first set of comprehensive rules for artificial intelligence, clearing a key hurdle as authorities across the globe race to rein in AI.

The European Parliament vote is one of the last steps before the rules become law, which could act as a model for other places working on similar regulations.

A yearslong effort by Brussels to draw up guardrails for AI has taken on more urgency as rapid advances in chatbots like ChatGPT show the benefits the emerging technology can bring — and the new perils it poses.

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — A fishing boat carrying migrants capsized and sank off the coast of Greece on Wednesday, authorities said, leaving at least 78 people dead and many dozens feared missing in one of the worst disasters of its kind this year.

Coast guard, navy and merchant vessels fanned out for a vast search-and-rescue operation that also included a plane and a helicopter.