Month: June 2021

The United Nations said 12 German troops and a Belgian soldier serving in the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Mali were wounded Friday in an attack in the country’s restive north.The U.N. mission in the country, MINUSMA, had earlier said that 15 peacekeepers were wounded when a temporary operational base in the Gao region was targeted with a vehicle bomb. Later, it corrected the numbers.German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer said three of the soldiers were seriously wounded. She told reporters in Bonn, Germany, that two soldiers were in a stable condition while the third was still undergoing surgery.All of the wounded …

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A man armed with a long knife killed three people and injured five others, some seriously, in Germany’s southern city of Wuerzburg on Friday before being shot by police and arrested, authorities said. Police identified the suspect as a 24-year-old Somali man living in Wuerzburg. His life was not in danger from his gunshot wound, they said. Bavaria’s top security official Joachim Herrmann said the injured include a young boy, whose father was probably among the dead. The suspect was in psychiatric treatment before the attack and had been known to police, Herrmann said. There was no immediate word on a possible motive. Emergency …

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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned Friday that the absence of an interim agreement to monitor Iran’s nuclear activities could prompt the United States to abandon efforts to rejoin a nuclear deal. “We’ll see if we can bridge the differences, but they’re real, and we have to — we have to be able to bridge them,” Blinken said at a briefing in Paris after meeting with French Foreign Minister Jean Yves Le Drian. “I would tell you that with regard to the IAEA this remains a serious concern, a concern that we’ve communicated to Iran, and it needs to be — …

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On the first day of its summit in Brussels, the 27-member European Union failed to agree to terms for proposed an EU-Russia summit, and sharply debated Hungary’s new LGBT legislation.   The Russia summit, proposed by France and Germany, was opposed by most eastern European nations, which felt such face-to-face discussions would appear to be rewarding Russian President Vladimir Putin for recent aggressive actions, such as cyberattacks or amassing troops on Ukraine’s border. Talking to reporters ahead of day two of the summit in Brussels, German Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed regret her fellow EU members could not come to an …

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Airlines and holiday providers on Friday expressed frustration with the U.K.’s plans to ease travel restrictions, saying uncertainty about how and when the new rules will be implemented make it difficult for people to book summer vacations. The government on Thursday expanded its “green list” of safe travel destinations, allowing people to visit without having to self-isolate for 10 days after returning to Britain. However, all but one of the new additions were also placed on a watchlist, meaning the quarantine requirement may be re-imposed at short notice. Transportation authorities also said they intend to relax travel restrictions by allowing …

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Search and rescue crews in the southeastern Czech Republic were going house to house Friday searching for survivors of a rare tornado that struck late Thursday, killing at least three people, injuring more than 100 and causing widespread damage.   Emergency crews from neighboring Austria and Slovakia joined the Czech army where the tornado struck along the Austrian border, about 270 kilometers southeast of Prague.   At least seven villages were severely damaged. The Czech news agency CTK quoted the mayor of Hrusky as saying that half of his village had been razed to the ground. Residents in the village …

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