Europe

MOSCOW, March 23 (Reuters) - Any attempt to arrest President Vladimir Putin after the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued a warrant for the Kremlin chief would amount to a declaration of war against Russia, his ally Dmitry Medvedev said on Thursday.

The ICC issued an arrest warrant on Friday, accusing Putin of the war crime of illegally deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine. It said there are reasonable grounds to believe that Putin bears individual criminal responsibility.

LONDON, March 22 (Xinhua) -- The United Kingdom's (UK) Parliament passed a key part of the government's new post-Brexit trade deal on Northern Ireland on Wednesday despite opposition from the region's major unionist party.

The vote was on the so-called "Stormont Brake," which offers Northern Ireland more power over new European Union (EU) laws. Members of the House of Commons (lower house of Parliament) voted by a margin of 515 to 29. Those voting 'no' included six Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) members.

PARIS (AP) — French unions on Thursday are holding their first mass demonstrations since President Emmanuel Macron inflamed public anger by forcing a higher retirement age through parliament without a vote. Strikes are upending travel, and blockades are expected at ports, refineries and garbage dumps.

Violence has intensified in recent days at scattered protests against the pension reform and Macron’s leadership.

BRUSSELS (AP) — EU leaders are set to endorse a deal aimed at sending to Ukraine 1 million rounds of artillery shells within the next 12 months to help the country counter Russia’s invasion forces.

The fast-track procedure was adopted during a meeting of foreign and defense ministers earlier this week, and leaders gathered at a summit in Brussels on Thursday will give it a political blessing, according to several senior EU diplomats.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia stepped up its missile and drone attacks against Ukraine on Wednesday, killing students and other civilians, in a violent follow-up to dueling high-level diplomatic missions aimed at bringing peace after 13 months of war.

BARCELONA, March 22 (Xinhua) -- Three people lost their lives early Wednesday morning in a fire in a block of flats in the municipality of Rubi near Barcelona.

The Catalan fire brigade confirmed the deaths after they had attended the blaze with eleven fire engines.

They said that five more people suffered smoke inhalation.

The three victims were all residents in the same first-floor apartment of the three-story building. They all died as they were trying to leave the building.

LONDON (AP) — British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak faces a rebellion from some fellow Conservatives, including his two immediate predecessors, when lawmakers vote Wednesday on his deal with the European Union to revise the rules governing Northern Ireland trade.

Former prime ministers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss said they would vote against the agreement, which is designed to resolve a thorny trade dispute that vexed U.K.-EU relations and triggered a political crisis in Belfast.

LONDON (AP) — U.K. inflation accelerated for the first time in four months in February as high food and energy prices hit consumers battered by the nation’s cost-of-living crisis.

The consumer price index jumped to 10.4% in the 12 months through February from 10.1% the previous month, the Office for National Statistics said Wednesday. The figures surprised analysts who had forecast inflation would slow to 9.9%.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine’s president posted a video Wednesday showing what he said was a Russian missile slamming into a city apartment building, hours after the Kremlin’s forces launched exploding drones that killed at least four people at a student dormitory near Kyiv before dawn.

The video posted by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Telegram appeared to be CCTV footage that captured the moment a missile hit the nine-story residential block by a busy road in the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia.

PARIS (AP) — French President Emmanuel Macron said Wednesday that the pension bill that he pushed through without a vote in parliament needs to be implemented by the “end of the year.”

Macron, who made the comments in an interview broadcast on national television, said the bill that raises the retirement age from 62 to 64 will “continue its democratic path.”

The Constitutional Council needs to review the bill in the coming weeks, and it can only be turned into law after the body gives its approval.