Europe

BERLIN, April 29 (Reuters) - Germany is considering sending long-ranged howitzers to Ukraine, a security source told Reuters on Friday, confirming a report published by Welt am Sonntag newspaper only days after Berlin first decided to supply heavy weapons to Kyiv.

The move follows warnings by the Kremlin that Western arms supplies to Ukraine posed a threat to the security of the European continent "and provoke instability".

KYIV, April 29 (Reuters) - A Ukrainian fighter holed up in Mariupol's steel works said on Friday he hoped the United Nations would come to the besieged and devastated area to evacuate civilians, and that for the first time he had real hope his troops might make it out alive.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's office said on Friday that Ukraine planned to evacuate civilians sheltering in underground bunkers in the vast industrial complex of Mariupol's Azovstal steel works, though he gave no details.

STOCKHOLM, April 28 (Reuters) - Sweden has failed to integrate the vast numbers of immigrants it has taken in over the past two decades, leading to parallel societies and gang violence, Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson said on Thursday, as she launched a series of initiatives to combat organised crime.

Many Swedes were shocked earlier this month after violent riots left more than 100 police injured. The violence erupted after a Swedish-Danish politician burned the Quran at a rally and sought to hold more in several immigrant-dominated neighborhoods.

VIENNA, April 28 (Xinhua) -- Radiation levels at the exclusion zone of Ukraine's Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which Russian forces had controlled for weeks before withdrawing in late March, have remained within the safe range, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Thursday.

IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi headed a mission to the Chernobyl plant earlier this week to deliver equipment, conduct radiological assessments and restore safeguards monitoring systems.

LONDON (AP) — Tennis great Boris Becker was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison on Friday for illicitly transferring large amounts of money and hiding assets after he was declared bankrupt.

The three-time Wimbledon champion was convicted earlier this month on four charges under the Insolvency Act and had faced a maximum sentence of seven years in prison.

Judge Deborah Taylor announced the sentence after hearing arguments from both the prosecutor and Becker’s attorney. She told the former top-ranked player that he’s shown no remorse.

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, says the war with Russia has not changed her husband but only revealed to the world his determination to prevail and the fact that he is a man you can rely on.

Zelenska, in an interview published Friday in the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita, also said she has not seen her husband, 44-year-old Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy, since Russia invaded Ukraine.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of trying to humiliate the United Nations by raining missiles on Kyiv during a visit to the city by the U.N. chief, an attack that shattered weeks of relative calm in the capital and upset a tentative return to normal.

28 April 2022; MEMO: Russia, on Thursday, urged Israel to cease its strikes on Syria, saying the attacks are "categorically unacceptable and inadmissible", Anadolu News Agency reports.

Speaking at a press briefing in Moscow, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, strongly condemned the Israeli actions, stressing that they violate international law.

28 April 2022; MEMO: A French lawyer has expressed deep concern over the recent assault of two veiled young Muslim women by police officers at the Pont de Clichy in the north-western part of the capital, Paris, Anadolu News Agency reports.

Video footage showing police officers involved in the incident on 14 April went viral, triggering tensions.

VIENNA, April 28. /TASS/: OSCE Chairman-in-Office, Foreign Minister of Poland Zbigniew Rau and OSCE Secretary General Helga Maria Schmid on Thursday announced that the OSCE would take immediate steps to implement the closure of the Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine, the OSCE said in a statement.

The decision followed the lack of consensus at the OSCE Permanent Council on 31 March 2022 to extend the mission’s mandate.