Europe

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Greece’s prime minister said Monday he was unaware that the country’s intelligence service had been bugging an opposition politician’s mobile phone for three months, insisting that he wouldn’t have allowed it had he known.

Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who faces elections next year, made the remarks in a televised address to the nation three days after a wiretapping scandal led to the resignations of the head of the National Intelligence Service, Panagiotis Kontoleon, and the general secretary of the prime minister’s office, Grigoris Dimitriadis.

MOSCOW, August 7. /TASS/: Russian journalist Daria Aslamova, who was earlier detained in Kosovo, has contacted the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper she works for, saying that she was released, the paper wrote on its website on Sunday.

The journalist said that Kosovo authorities released her last night, after which she made it alone to the Serbia-Kosovo border. She is currently in the town of Raska in Serbia. "I got to the border by 4 am. The Serbian border guards also questioned me to clarify why there was no deportation stamp," the newspaper quoted its journalist as saying.

MOSCOW, August 7. /TASS/: Russia’s Arkady Dvorkovich has been reelected as president of the World Chess Federation (FIDE).

The election was held during the FIDE General Assembly in India’s Chennai on Sunday.

The other registered candidate running in the election was Ukraine’s Andrey Barishpolets. Inalbek Sheripov of Belarus and Bachar Kouatly from France withdrew as candidates.

MOSCOW, August 7./TASS/: The number of confirmed coronavirus cases grew by 20,303 across Russia in the past 24 hours, up from 19,974 a day earlier, the coronavirus crisis center told journalists on Sunday.

This is the highest daily tally since March 30, when over 20,000 cases were recorded in one day. Overall, Russia has recorded 18,712,699 coronavirus cases since the pandemic began.

STOCKHOLM, August 7. /TASS/: Europe will face an economic slump due to the conflict in Ukraine, Finnish President Sauli Niinisto said in an interview with Sunday’s issue of Finland’s Maaseudun Tulevaisuus newspaper.

"People in Finland and in other EU countries will have to put up with the fact that the economy will not be growing year after year. It may tell adversely on Europe’s unity, because development stops abruptly and the number of challenges increases," he noted.

MOSCOW, August 7. /TASS/: Russia’s foreign ministry is in contact with the Cuban side to coordinate efforts to put out fire at an oil storage facility in the Matanzas province, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Sunday.

"Following the disaster, Cuba has requested international assistance. Russia’s foreign ministry and relevant agencies are in contact with the Cuban side to coordinate possible joint actions and necessary assistance," she said.

Aug 7 (Reuters) - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Sunday that if Russia proceeded with referendums in occupied areas of his country on joining Russia, there could be no talks with Ukraine or its international allies.

Russian forces and their separatist allies now hold large swathes of territory in eastern Ukraine's Donbas region and in southern areas after launching what the Kremlin calls a "special military operation" into its neighbour's territory. Officials in both areas have raised the possibility of holding referendums.

BORGO VIRGILIO, Italy, Aug 7 (Reuters) - Heatwaves sweeping Europe this summer have brought not just record high temperatures and scorched fields: the drought-stricken waters of Italy's River Po are running so low they revealed a previously submerged World War Two bomb.

Military experts defused and carried out a controlled explosion on Sunday of the 450-kg (1,000-pound) bomb, which was discovered on July 25 near the northern village of Borgo Virgilio, close to the city of Mantua.

PARIS, Aug 7 (Reuters) - France on Sunday braced for a fourth heatwave this summer as its worst drought on record left parched villages without safe drinking water and farmers warned of a looming milk shortage in the winter.

Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne's office has set up a crisis team to tackle a drought that has forced scores of villages to rely on water deliveries by truck, prompted state-run utility EDF (EDF.PA) to curb nuclear power output and stressed crops.

KYIV, Aug 7 (Reuters) - Ukraine accused Russia on Sunday of again shelling Europe's largest nuclear power plant, the Zaporizhzhia, and called for new international sanctions on Moscow for "nuclear terror".

Ukraine's state nuclear power firm said Russian forces damaged three radiation sensors at the facility in renewed shelling on Saturday night, wounding a worker with shrapnel.