Europe

1 Mar 2023; MEMO: Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, extended his condolences to Greece on Wednesday over a fatal train crash that has claimed the lives of dozens, Reuters reports.

2 Mar 2023; MEMO: French President Emmanuel Macron announced on Monday that he will continue to "move forward" to strengthen Paris' relationship with both Algeria and Morocco.

However, media sites have said that the French government found itself "besieged at the international level and the African one in particular."

MOSCOW, March 1. /TASS/:  Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stressed at a meeting with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu on the sidelines of G20 foreign ministers’ meeting on Wednesday that the grain deal could only be extended with the interests of Russian producers of agriculture products and fertilizers taken into consideration.

BERLIN, March 1. /TASS/: The German government thinks that Russia should be the first to take a step towards achieving peace in Ukraine, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said at a joint press conference with Latvian Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins in Berlin on Wednesday.

Scholz argued it was "clear" to him that Russia had attacked Ukraine, and that Russia was the country that "must do something" to make peace possible. He would like to see the withdrawal of Russian troops in the first place.

NEAR CHASIV YAR, Ukraine, March 1 (Reuters) - Russian forces carried out relentless attacks on Bakhmut on Wednesday, trying to encircle the small eastern Ukrainian city and claim their first major prize for more than half a year after some of the bloodiest fighting of the war.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy accused Moscow of throwing waves of men into battle in Bakhmut with no regard for their lives. The leader of Russia's Wagner mercenary group said the Ukrainians were putting up "furious resistance" trying to hold the city at all costs.

MOSCOW, March 1 (Xinhua) -- Moscow on Wednesday opened the 70-km Big Circle Line (BCL), the longest subway line in the world.

The metro line was constructed from 2011 to 2022. The first section of the BCL opened in 2018, and another 20-km section, which is the longest in the history of the capital's metro, was launched in December 2021.

The BCL has 31 stations, with 24 of those providing 47 interchanges to existing and future stations of the capital's metro.

HELSINKI, March 1 (Xinhua) -- Hungary calls for a United Nations (UN) investigation into the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines, which American investigative journalist has claimed were destroyed by the United States, reported Helsinki Times on Tuesday.

The Nord Stream pipelines, which connected Russia to Germany, were deliberately destroyed in September 2022, contributing to Europe's energy dependence on the United States and prompting European countries to support the escalation of the conflict in Ukraine, according to the Finnish daily.

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Norway’s energy minister on Wednesday canceled a trip to the U.K. because of a protest against a wind farm that campaigners say hinders the rights of the Sami Indigenous people to raise reindeer in Arctic Norway.

LEST, Slovakia (AP) — Former Soviet satellite Slovakia has been a NATO member since 2004, but the reality of belonging to the world’s biggest military alliance really kicked in after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a year ago.

The small central European country now hosts thousands of NATO troops while allied aircraft patrol its skies, allowing Bratislava to consider becoming the first nation to send fighter jets to neighboring Ukraine — getting rid of its unwieldy Soviet-era planes at the same time.

Defense Minister Jaroslav Nad is grateful.

TEMPE, Greece (AP) — A passenger train carrying hundreds of people collided at high speed with an oncoming freight train in a fiery wreck in northern Greece, killing 32 and injuring at least 85, officials said Wednesday.

Multiple cars derailed and at least three burst into flames after the collision near the town of Tempe on Tuesday just before midnight. Rescue crews illuminated the scene with floodlights before dawn on Wednesday as they searched frantically through the twisted, smoking wreckage for survivors.