Europe

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The Dutch leader said he is ashamed that hundreds of asylum-seekers have been forced to sleep in the sweltering heat outside an overcrowded migrant reception center, as his government announced measures Friday to ease the situation by providing more accommodations and temporarily restricting migration.

“It is terrible what is happening in Ter Apel,” Prime Minister Mark Rutte said, referring to the center in the northeastern village of Ter Apel.

But, he added: “I think together we have found a way out of this problem.”

BERLIN (AP) — Authorities in western Germany said Friday that two boys who drowned in a lake near the border with Belgium were British tourists.

The brothers, aged 7 and 9, were reported missing by their parents at a designated swimming area on the Eiserbach lake south of Aachen.

Rescuers were able to retrieve the children from the water and they were taken to hospitals in Aachen and Cologne, but later died.

Aachen prosecutors said they were investigating whether the deaths were the result of negligence.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Authorities began distributing iodine tablets to residents near Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant Friday in case of a radiation leak, amid mounting fears that the fighting around the complex could trigger a catastrophe.

The move came a day after the plant was temporarily knocked offline because of what officials said was fire damage to a transmission line. The incident heightened dread of a nuclear disaster in a country still haunted by the 1986 explosion at Chernobyl.

LONDON (AP) — Jennifer Jones keeps feeding money into her energy meter, but it never seems to be enough. And when she can’t pay, she feels the impact immediately.

The power in her London home has gone off suddenly three times recently, once when her partner was cooking an egg.

KYIV, Aug 25 (Reuters) - The International Atomic Energy Agency could travel to Ukraine's Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant for a mission in southern Ukraine in the coming days, Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galushchenko said on Thursday.

"A visit is planned. We are talking about the coming days - definitely no later than the beginning of September," Galushchenko told Reuters in an interview in Kyiv.

KYIV, Aug 25 (Reuters) - Ukraine's capital renamed 95 streets on Thursday as part of a drive to purge Russian and Soviet place names, Kyiv's mayor announced a day after Ukraine marked 31 years of independence.

Since Russia invaded in February, Ukraine has accelerated what it calls "derussification", a campaign to shed the legacy of hundreds of years of rule by Moscow.

Aug 25 (Reuters) - The world narrowly avoided a radiation accident at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear station in Ukraine on Thursday after power was cut to the two remaining working reactors, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said.

Ukraine's state nuclear company Energoatom said fires in the ash pits of a coal power station near the complex had disconnected the reactors from the power grid. The company blamed Russian "invaders" for the disconnection.

PARIS, Aug 25 (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday he wanted to build the future of Franco-Algerian relations by confronting a painful colonial past but also by focusing on future challenges.

"We have a complex, painful common past. And it has at times prevented us from looking at the future," Macron said after meeting with Algeria President Abdelmadjid Tebboune on the first of a three-day visit to the North African country. 

BERLIN, Aug. 24 (Xinhua) -- Almost four years after the start of trial operations, the world's first passenger train network powered by hydrogen was launched in the German federal state of Lower Saxony on Wednesday.

The 14 trains with hydrogen fuel cell drive produced by French manufacturer Alstom are to replace diesel trains, according to the local transport authority of Lower Saxony (LNVG). Five of the new trains are already in operation, with the others to follow by the end of the year.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a major buildup of his country’s military forces Thursday in an apparent effort to replenish troops that have suffered heavy losses in six months of bloody warfare and prepare for a long, grinding fight ahead in Ukraine.

The move to increase the number of troops by 137,000, or 13%, to 1.15 million by the end of the year came amid chilling developments on the ground in Ukraine: