Europe

BREGANA BORDER CROSSING, Croatia, Jan 1 (Reuters) - Croatia rang in two historic changes with the new year, as the European Union's youngest member joined both the EU's border-free Schengen zone and the euro common currency, fulfilling longstanding ambitions of close integration with Europe.

At the Bregana border crossing with neighbouring Slovenia, police took down signs at midnight and a barrier was lifted up for the last time, before a placard reading "free passage" was installed, symbolising the end of border checks.

LONDON, Jan 1 (Reuters) - The British arm of the Extinction Rebellion environmental group said on Sunday it would take a break from acts of public disruption in order to bring more people on board its campaign for urgent action to counter climate change.

The grassroots group's protests have previously included closing key roads and bridges in central London, blockading oil refineries, smashing windows at Barclays bank headquarters and spraying fake blood over the finance ministry building.

KYIV/DONETSK PROVINCE FRONT LINE, Ukraine, Jan 1 (Reuters) - Ukrainians cheered from their balconies while their air defences blasted Russian missiles and drones out of the sky in the first hours of 2023, as Moscow saw in the new year by attacking civilian targets across Ukraine.

Ukraine's Air Force command said it had destroyed 45 Iranian-made Shahed drones overnight -- 32 of them on Sunday after midnight and 13 late on Saturday. That was on top of 31 missile attacks and 12 air strikes across the country in the past 24 hours.

ZAGREB, Jan. 1 (Xinhua) -- Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, visited Croatia on New Year's day to mark the country's entry into the eurozone and the border-free Schengen area.

Various activities were held at border crossings with Slovenia and Hungary on early Sunday morning to celebrate the historic moment.

GENEVA, Jan. 1 (Xinhua) -- Alain Berset from the Social Democrat party of Switzerland on Sunday took office as President of the Swiss Confederation for the second time.

Berset is also head of the Swiss Federal Department of Home Affairs. Born in Fribourg on April 9, 1972, he previously held the presidential post in 2018.

BERLIN (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI leaves his homeland with a complicated legacy: pride in a German pontiff but a church deeply divided over the need for reforms in the wake of a sexual abuse scandal in which his own actions of decades ago were faulted.

Benedict has long drawn mixed reviews in Germany, a country where Christians are roughly evenly split between Catholics and Protestants and where many struggled with his conservative stance.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) —

Ukrainians had a grim start to 2023 on Sunday, with yet more sirens and fresh missile attacks on their territory, as the death toll from Russia’s massive New Year Eve assault across the country climbed to at least three.

Night-time shelling that battered parts of the southern city of Kherson killed one person, wounded another and blew out hundreds of windows in a children’s hospital, according to deputy presidential chief of staff Kyrylo Tymoshenko.

ZAGREB, Croatia (AP) — At the stroke of midnight on Saturday, Croatia switched to the shared European currency, the euro, and removed dozens of border checkpoints to join the world’s largest passport-free travel area.

It marked a fresh start for the small Balkan nation of 4 million people that captured international attention three decades ago as the site of a brutal war that left nearly a quarter of its economy in ruins.

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Veteran reporter Giovanna Chirri was starting to doze off in the Vatican press room on a slow holiday when all of a sudden the Latin she learned in high school made her perk up — and gave her the scoop of a lifetime.

It was Feb. 11, 2013, and Chirri was watching closed-circuit television coverage of Pope Benedict XVI presiding over a pro-forma meeting of cardinals to set dates for three upcoming canonizations.

31 Dec 2022; AA: Russian President Vladimir Putin has approved a set of guidelines on the development of unmanned aerial vehicles, the Kremlin announced on Saturday.

“Vladimir Putin approved a list of instructions on the development of unmanned aerial vehicles,” the Kremlin said on Telegram.

“In particular, the Government was instructed to approve priority areas and a development strategy for unmanned aviation for the period up to 2030 and until 2035,” the statement added.