Europe

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — For days, the Ukrainian teenager has waited in the attic, just down the street from the cemetery of her flooded town, marking time with her 83-year-old grandfather and two other elderly people and hoping for help to escape the deluge of a catastrophic dam collapse.

LE PECQ, France (AP) — The attacker slashed at the 24-year-old Catholic pilgrim with the knife that he used to savagely stab one young child after another. But rather than run, Henri held his ground — using a weighty backpack he was carrying to swing at the assailant and fend off his blade.

French media hailed Henri as “the hero with a backpack” Friday after he was shown in a video grappling with the assailant and charging after him during the knife attack that critically wounded four children between the ages of 22 months and 3 years old, and also injured two adults.

08 June 2023; MEMO: Italy sought last-minute changes on Thursday to a tentative EU agreement on sharing out responsibility for looking after migrants and refugees, pushing for a cut in the number of people each country would take on Reuters reports.

Home affairs ministers from across the 27-member bloc are meeting to try seal a deal to end years of damaging feuds dating back to 2015, when more than a million people – mostly fleeing the war in Syria – reached the EU across the Mediterranean.

BRUSSELS, June 8. /TASS/: Greece and Hungary have moved to block the latest draft of Brussels’ 11th package of sanctions against Russia at a meeting of the Committee of Permanent Representatives of the EU, Belgium’s RTBF TV reported.

Budapest and Athens are demanding that a number of companies be removed from the list of those supporting Russia's efforts to bypass Western sanctions.

However, according to the TV channel, the EU countries have no systemic objections to the latest round of sanctions put forward by the European Commission (EC).

MOSCOW, June 8. /TASS/: Some 23 individuals have been injured as a result of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant’s dam collapsing and the flooding of the Kherson Region, medical services told TASS on Thursday.

"According to the latest data, 23 people have been injured, they have hypothermia and traumas, 21 individuals have been hospitalized," a source in the medical services said.

MOSCOW, June 8. /TASS/: Russia is considering the possibility of creating a new system of clubs of mutual insurance and reinsurance of risks to third parties with friendly states to supply Russian oil to the world market, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak wrote in an article for the Energy Policy magazine.

MINSK, June 8. /TASS/: The Ukrainian leadership was ready to settle the conflict with Russia but gave up under the US pressure, Russia’s Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev said on Thursday.

MINSK, June 8. /TASS/: The Kiev regime’s much-hyped counteroffensive is simply disinformation, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said.

LUXEMBOURG, June 8 (NNN-AGENCIES) — EU interior ministers meeting Thursday will seek agreement on a long-stalled revision of the bloc’s asylum and migration rules that is aimed at making burden-sharing fairer.

But diplomats cautioned the odds of a deal were still “50-50”, with increasing numbers of European Union members adopting hardline policies on the issue.
 
The proposal on the table at the meeting in Luxembourg calls for compulsory solidarity among EU countries, but with an option of showing that in one of two ways.

June 8 (Reuters) - Taiwan-based computer manufacturer Acer (2353.TW) supplied at least $70.4 million worth of computer hardware to Russia between April 8, 2022 and March 31, 2023, according to customs data seen by Reuters, after saying it would suspend its business there.

While not illegal, Acer's actions contrast with those of key Western rivals such as Dell (DELL.N) and HP (HPE.N) which ceased shipments in February and April 2022, respectively, following Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, customs records drawn from a commercial trade data provider show.