Europe

BERLIN, May 27 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag, on Friday voted to extend the country’s military deployment with the UN’s peacekeeping mission in Mali for another year.

The new and final mandate is to end on May 31 next year. Around 1,400 German troops are part of the Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA).

GENEVA, May 27 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The World Health Organization said it was helping a growing number of farmers turn away from tobacco to help strengthen food security, particularly in Africa.

Ahead of World No Tobacco Day on Wednesday, the WHO said it had teamed up with other United Nations agencies to support farmers wishing to convert from growing tobacco to growing food.

The scheme’s pilot in Kenya has proved successful and now the UN wants to export it to other countries and continents.

BRUSSELS, May 26 (Reuters) - The race to be the next NATO boss is heating up. But it is a race run largely in the dark, with no sign of a winner yet.

Jens Stoltenberg, the transatlantic military alliance's Norwegian secretary-general, is due to step down at the end of September after nine years in post.

Many alliance members would like his succession settled at, or even before, a NATO summit in Lithuania in mid-July.

LONDON, May 26 (Reuters) - Britain, France, Italy, Germany and the United States condemned Kosovo's decision to force access to municipal buildings in northern Kosovo on Friday, calling on the authorities to step back and de-escalate the situation.

BERLIN, May 27 (Reuters) - Ukraine has asked Germany to supply it with Taurus cruise missiles, an air-launched weapon with a range of some 500 km (310 miles), a spokesperson for the defence ministry in Berlin said on Saturday.

Germany received the request several days ago, the spokesperson said, confirming a report by Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. She declined to provide further details or say how likely it was that Germany would supply the missiles to Ukraine.

May 26 (Reuters) - Ukraine's defence ministry on Friday said Russia was planning to simulate a major accident at a nuclear power station controlled by pro-Moscow forces to try to thwart a long-planned Ukrainian counteroffensive to retake territory occupied by Russia.

The Zaporizhzhia plant, which lies in an area of Russian-occupied southern Ukraine, is Europe's biggest nuclear power station and the area has been repeatedly hit by shelling that both sides blame each other for.

MOSCOW, May 27 (Reuters) - Russia on Saturday dismissed criticism from U.S. President Joe Biden over Moscow's plan to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, saying Washington had for decades deployed just such nuclear weapons in Europe.

Russia said on Thursday it was pushing ahead with the first deployment of such weapons outside its borders since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said the weapons were already on the move.

ZVECAN, Kosovo, May 26 (Reuters) - The United States and allies rebuked Kosovo for escalating tensions with Serbia on Friday, saying the use of force to install mayors in ethnic Serb areas undermined efforts to improve troubled relations with neighbouring Serbia.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic placed the army on full combat alert and ordered units to move closer to the border following clashes on Friday between Kosovan police and protesters opposed to the ethnic Albanian mayors.

26 May 2023; AA: The humanitarian organizations have lost access to 60,000 people in Ukraine due to the worsening security situation on the front lines, the UN said on Friday.

"Assistance to areas under Russian military control remained extremely limited,"Jens Laerke, the spokesperson of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told a UN briefing in Geneva.

26 May 2023; MEMO: The European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), which represents over 45 million European workers and their trade unions, decided today to boycott products made in illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The organisation also stressed the importance of regulatory measures to prevent EU legal entities from importing or exporting products manufactured in illegal Israeli settlements in accordance with EU treaties and international law.