Europe

WARSAW, Aug 28 (Reuters) - European judges' associations challenged in European Union's General Court a decision to approve Poland's recovery and resilience plan, they said in a statement on Sunday.

Poland's access to 23.9 billion euros ($23.8 billion) in grants and 11.5 billion euros in cheap loans had been blocked due to a dispute over judicial independence.

But in June the Commission said it was approving Poland's recovery plan, opening the way for Warsaw to get the cash. The move was approved by the Council of the EU, consisting of economy and finance ministers. 

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The death toll from an accident when a truck drove off a dike and slammed into a community barbecue in a village south of Rotterdam rose to six Sunday and police said a further seven people are in hospital, including one in critical condition.

Three men and three women were killed, ranging in age from 28 to 75, police said.

KHARKIV, Ukraine (AP) — For 22 days, Serhiy Chornobryvets barely slept and rarely took off his red paramedic uniform. Day and night, he raced around his hometown of Mariupol, rescuing those wounded by the Russian bombs and shells that pummeled the southern Ukrainian city.

When he finally escaped Mariupol — whose residents endured some of the worst suffering of the war during a nearly three-month siege — he still did not rest. Instead, he joined an organization that sends medics to the front lines in eastern Ukraine, where the fighting is currently concentrated.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian rocket and artillery strikes hit areas across the Dnieper River from Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, Ukrainian officials said Sunday, as fears persisted that fighting in the vicinity could damage the plant and cause a radiation leak.

Russian forces took control of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant soon after the war began and hold adjacent territory along the left bank of the wide river. Ukraine controls the right bank, including the cities of Nikopol and Marhanets, each of them about 10 kilometers (six miles) from the plant.

27 August 2022; AA: Anders Breivik, who killed nearly 80 people in Norway in 2011, is again suing the Norwegian government for human rights violations to end his solitary confinement in prison.

His lawyer, Oystein Storrvik, announced Thursday that a notice that states that no one must be subjected to "torture" or "inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" was sent to the Norwegian Justice Ministry.

27 August 2022; AA: Shale gas production may be brought back on the table to alleviate the European energy crisis similar to coal and nuclear power, which had long been shelved due to mounting reactions from environmentalists. 

Shale gas is extracted through a combination of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, which has been criticized for its damage to the environment by contaminating ground and surface water.

27 August 2022; AA: More than a million tons of grain have been safely shipped from Ukrainian ports since the beginning of August under a historic deal, the Turkish National Defense Ministry said on Saturday.

In July, Türkiye, the UN, Russia, and Ukraine signed a deal in Istanbul to reopen three Ukrainian ports for the export of Ukraine grain, which had been stuck for months due to the Russia-Ukraine war, now in its seventh month.

DONETSK, August 27. /TASS/: People’s militia officers in the Donetsk People’s Republic killed a US national, Alan Joshua, who had been fighting for Ukraine, in combat on August 23, the DPR’s ombudsperson Darya Morozova said on Telegram on Saturday.

The DPR has notified US officials and the head of the UN monitoring mission in Ukraine, Matilda Bogner, of his death, she added.

MOSCOW, August 27. /TASS/: Russia registered 47,093 coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, the anti-coronavirus crisis center reported on Saturday. The total number of cases has reached 19,359,066.

As many as 4,354 people were hospitalized with COVID-19 over the past day, up from 3,912 the day before. Hospitalizations increased in 49 regions of the country and declined in 34 regions.

Moscow’s COVID-19 cases surged by 6,915, down from 7,602 the day before, to 3,004,574 in the past day and St. Petersburg’s cases increased by 4,214 to 1,643,570.

MOSCOW, August 27. /TASS/: US diplomats abroad have been focusing on moves to ignite new hotspots around the world, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote on her Telegram channel on Saturday.