Europe

GENEVA, Jan 9 (Reuters) - Pakistan said on Monday that donors had committed to give more than $8 billion to help it recover from last year's devastating floods in what is seen as a major test for who pays for climate disasters.

Officials from some 40 countries as well as private donors and international financial institutions are gathering for a meeting in Geneva as Islamabad seeks help covering around half of a total recovery bill of $16.3 billion.

Jan 9 (Reuters) - The Kremlin said on Monday that new deliveries of Western weapons, including French-made armoured vehicles, to Kyiv would "deepen the suffering of the Ukrainian people" and would not change the course of the conflict.

France and Germany announced last week that they would send light combat vehicles to Ukraine, ramping up their military support for Kyiv. The United States said it would also provide armoured fighting vehicles to Ukraine.

"This supply will not be able to change anything", Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday.

LONDON, Jan 9 (Reuters) - Britain is considering supplying Ukraine with tanks for the first time to help the country fight Russian forces, Sky News reported on Monday, citing unnamed sources.

Discussions have been taking place "for a few weeks" about delivering the British Army's Challenger 2 main battle tank to Ukraine, Sky said, quoting a Western source with knowledge of the conversations.

Supplying tanks would represent a significant step-up in Western support to Ukraine, but the British government has not yet taken a final decision on the matter, the report added.

KYIV/KRAMATORSK, Ukraine, Jan 9 (Reuters) - Ukraine said it was strengthening its forces around Bakhmut in the eastern Donbas region and repelling constant attacks there by Russian mercenary group Wagner, whose leader has vowed to capture the area's vast underground mines.

Kyiv had sent reinforcements to Soledar, a small town near Bakhmut where the situation was particularly difficult, Ukrainian officials said.

VILNIUS, Jan. 9 (Xinhua) -- LTG Cargo, the freight forwarding subsidiary of Lithuania's state-owned railway company Lietuvos Gelezinkeliai (Lithuanian Railways), has started transporting coal to Poland to help the neighboring country meet its demand for solid fuels, according to a press release issued on Monday.

The first freight train was on its way to Poland, the Baltic News Service (BNS) reported on Monday.

KRAMATORSK, Ukraine (AP) — Officials at a vocational school in an eastern Ukraine city dismissed claims by Russia that hundreds of Ukrainian troops were killed in a missile strike there, saying Monday that a rocket merely blew out windows and damaged classrooms.

Russia specifically named the vocational school in Kramatorsk as the target of an attack in the almost 11-month war. The Russian Defense Ministry said its missiles hit two temporary bases housing 1,300 Ukrainian troops in the city, killing 600 of them, late Saturday.

LONDON (AP) — U.K. government ministers are meeting trade union leaders on Monday in a bid to end a wave of strikes that has hobbled the rail network and strained the overburdened health system.

Health Secretary Steve Barclay is holding talks with health care unions, while other ministers are meeting with railway unions that have staged months of strikes, and teaching unions considering classroom walkouts.

LESBOS, Greece (AP) — A Somali migrant serving life in prison for people smuggling appeared in court Monday to appeal his sentence, in a case backed by a group of European Parliament members who say he was wrongfully convicted.

Mohammad Hanad Abdi was sentenced to 142 years in prison in 2021 after being convicted following a deadly crossing in a dinghy from Turkey to the nearby Greek island of Lesbos the previous year.

PRAGUE (AP) — A Prague court on Monday acquitted former Prime Minister Andrej Babis of fraud charges in a $2 million case involving European Union subsidies.

A prosecutor requested a three-year suspended sentence and a fine of 10 million Czech koruna ($440,000) for the populist billionaire. The prosecution still can appeal.

Babis pleaded not guilty and repeatedly said the charges against him were politically motivated.

He wasn’t present at Prague’s Municipal Court on Monday. His former associate, Jana Nagyova, who signed the subsidy request, was also acquitted.

ROME (AP) — Pope Francis on Monday broke his silence on the nationwide protests convulsing Iran, denouncing the recourse to the death penalty there and seemingly legitimizing the rallies as demonstrations “demanding greater respect for the dignity of women.”

Francis made the comments in an annual speech to ambassadors accredited to the Vatican, a foreign policy speech the pope delivers at the start of each year outlining the areas of greatest concern for the Holy See.