Europe

Jan 14 (Reuters) - A volcano erupted in southwest Iceland on Sunday, with molten lava flows reaching the outskirts of a small fishing town by midafternoon, setting some houses alight, although the town was evacuated earlier and no people were in danger, authorities said.

Fountains of molten rock and smoke spewed from fissures in the ground across a wide area stretching to the town of Grindavik, where at least one house had caught fire, live video published by daily Morgunbladid showed.

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Denmark’s prime minister proclaimed Frederik X as king on Sunday after his mother Queen Margrethe II formally signed her abdication, with massive crowds turning out to rejoice in the throne passing from a beloved monarch to her popular son.

DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) — Leaders of talks on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s peace formula on Sunday said a growing number of countries are working to help set the groundwork for Russia to join one day, an admittedly distant goal as the nearly two-year war grinds on and neither side willing to cede ground.

KHARKIV REGION, Ukraine, Jan 12 (Reuters) - Ukraine's ground forces commander said on Friday that Kyiv needed more military aircraft for its war effort, such as U.S. A-10 attack jets to support infantry and planes that could fire long-range cruise missiles.

Colonel-General Oleksandr Syrskyi spoke to Reuters in an exclusive interview at an undisclosed location in the northeastern region of Kharkiv that borders western Russia.

MOSCOW, Jan 13 (Reuters) - A huge fire tore through a warehouse belonging to one of Russia's biggest online retailers in St. Petersburg on Saturday, the Ministry of Emergency Situations said, saying firefighters had succeeded in halting it spreading further.

The warehouse's owner, Wildberries, said in a statement that all its staff had been evacuated. Nobody was reported to have been hurt.

There was no immediate word on how the fire, which covered 70,000 square metres and was rated as a category five, the most serious, had started in the suburb of Russia's second city.

KIEV, Jan. 13 (Xinhua) -- Explosions were heard in several cities across Ukraine on Saturday morning as Russia launched missile attacks against the country, the Ukrainian air force and media outlets said.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — France’s new foreign minister arrived in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv on Saturday to meet with his counterpart in a sign of support for Ukraine as Russia’s full-scale invasion nears its second anniversary.

Stéphane Séjourné noted that Ukraine was his first destination abroad since his appointment in a government reshuffle this week.

“Ukraine is and will remain France’s priority,” he said. “The defense of the fundamental principles of international law is being played out in Ukraine.”

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Accused of committing genocide against Palestinians, Israel insisted at the United Nations’ highest court Friday that its war in Gaza was a legitimate defense of its people and that it was Hamas militants who were guilty of genocide.

BERLIN (AP) — The German government has approved the export of air-defense missiles to Saudi Arabia, underlining a softening of its hard line of recent years toward arms exports to the kingdom.

Government spokesperson Steffen Hebestreit on Wednesday confirmed a report by news magazine Der Spiegel that Germany’s Security Council, made up of Chancellor Olaf Scholz and several other ministers, approved the export of 150 air-to-air missiles for the Iris-T air defense system at the end of 2023.

LONDON (AP) — Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said Wednesday he will introduce measures to overturn the convictions of more than 900 post office branch managers who were wrongly accused of theft or fraud because of a faulty computer system.

Sunak said the scandal, which saw hundreds of postmasters falsely convicted of stealing money because Post Office computers wrongly showed that funds were missing from their shops, was “one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in our nation’s history.”