Europe

KYIV, Jan 14 (Reuters) - Russia unleashed a major missile attack on Ukraine on Saturday, smashing a nine-storey apartment block in the city of Dnipro, killing at least five people and striking vital energy facilities across the country, officials said.

The nation's Energy Minster German Galushchenko warned the strikes that targeted the majority of the regions would make the coming days "difficult."

LONDON, Jan 14 (Reuters) - Britain on Saturday called the execution by Iran of British-Iranian national Alireza Akbari a barbaric act, and imposed sanctions on Iran's prosecutor general in response.

The Iranian judiciary's Mizan news agency had earlier reported the execution of the former Iranian deputy defence minister who had been sentenced to death on charges of spying for Britain.

Britain had said it should not follow through with the death penalty.

Jan 14 (Reuters) - Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev accused Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Saturday of shameful subservience to the United States and suggested he should ritually disembowel himself.

It was the latest in a long line of shocking and provocative statements from Medvedev, who was once seen as a Western-leaning reformer but has reinvented himself as an arch-hawk since Russia invaded Ukraine last year.

MOSCOW, Jan. 14 (Xinhua) -- Britain's Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs James Cleverly is among 36 British citizens that have been recently barred from entering Russia, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Saturday.

BERLIN, Jan. 13 (Xinhua) -- Germany's price-adjusted gross domestic product (GDP) in 2022 was 1.9 percent higher than in the previous year, according to preliminary figures published by the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) on Friday.

Despite "difficult framework conditions," such as the consequences of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, rising energy prices, delivery bottlenecks and the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, the German economy "managed to perform well," Ruth Brand, president of Destatis, said in a statement.

BERLIN (AP) — Germany on Saturday inaugurated its second liquefied natural gas terminal, part of a drive by Europe’s biggest economy to put reliance on Russian energy sources firmly behind it.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz took part in the ceremony in Lubmin on the Baltic Sea coast, which came less than a month after he inaugurated Germany’s first LNG terminal at Wilhelmshaven on the North Sea. Several more are expected to go online in the coming months, including another in Lubmin.

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Australian cardinal who decried the papacy of Pope Francis as a “catastrophe” was given a funeral Saturday and hailed by some fellow churchmen at St. Peter’s Basilica, with the pontiff imparting a final blessing for the once high-ranking Vatican prelate.

VALAKELIAI, Lithuania (AP) — A powerful gas pipeline explosion that prompted the evacuation of a village in northern Lithuania was most likely caused by a technical malfunction, the head of the country’s natural gas transmission system said Saturday.

The blast Friday evening sent flames 50 meters (about 150 feet) into the sky. No casualties were reported but about 250 people were evacuated from the nearby village of Valakeliai as a precaution. The fire was extinguished by midnight and the residents returned to their homes on Saturday as repair work began on the damaged pipeline.

PRAGUE (AP) — Populist billionaire Andrej Babis was in the lead in the Czech presidential election, according to early results on Saturday.

Babis, a former prime minister, had 38% of the vote with ballots from more than 50% of polling stations counted, the Czech Statistics Office said.

His main challengers, retired army Gen. Petr Pavel was running second with 32.5% while another challenger, economist Danuse Nerudova, was in third with 13.7%.

If no candidate achieves a majority, the top two finishers will face each other in a runoff in two weeks’ time.

LONDON (AP) — British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Saturday promised to provide tanks and artillery systems to Ukraine, amid renewed missile attacks by Moscow targeting the Ukrainian capital and other cities.

Sunak’s Downing Street office said in a statement that he made the pledge to provide Challenger 2 tanks and other artillery systems after speaking to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday.