Europe

LONDON (AP) — Britain shattered its record for highest temperature ever registered Tuesday amid a heat wave that has seared swaths of Europe, as the U.K.’s national weather forecaster said such highs are now a fact of life in a country ill-prepared for such extremes.

KIEV, July 18. /TASS/: Ukraine will sever diplomatic relations with Belarus, if its army crosses into Ukrainian territory, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba said in an interview with the Ukrainian edition of Forbes magazine on Monday.

Kiev considers Minsk as an active participant of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, Kuleba stressed.

MOSCOW, July 18. /TASS/: Tehran is preparing the necessary documents to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), Iranian Ambassador to Russia Kazem Jalali said in an interview with TASS.

"The process of obtaining full membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization consists of numerous stages that a candidate country needs to implement within the established time frame," he pointed out.

BRUSSELS, July 18. /TASS/: The EU sanctions do not and will not contain any direct restrictions on Russian exports of fertilizers and foodstuffs and any bans on their payment, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said after a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels.

NOVO-OGARYOVO, July 18. /TASS/: Russia is not going to lose heart or have decades of its progress reversed, despite inhospitable forecasts from opponents, President Vladimir Putin told the Council for Strategic Development at a meeting on Monday.

The president said Russia was being completely denied access to foreign hi-tech products.

"We understand that this is a major challenge to our country, however we are not going to lose heart or have decades of our progress reversed, despite predictions from a number of our ill-wishers, the opposite is true," Putin insisted.

PARIS, July 18 (Reuters) - The governments of France and the United Arab Emirates signed on Monday a strategic agreement to cooperate in the energy sector, the French government said.

The partnership aimed to identify joint investment projects in France, the UAE or elsewhere in the sectors of hydrogen, renewable and nuclear energy, the French government said in a statement.

"In the currently uncertain energy context, this agreement will pave the way for a stable long-term framework for cooperation, opening the way for new industrial contracts," it added.

MOSCOW, July 18 (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Monday that it was impossible to cut Russia off from the rest of the world, and that sanctions imposed by Western countries would not turn the clock back on Russia's development.

Since sending troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24, Russia has been hit with a barrage of Western sanctions, designed to isolate it from the global economy, that have deprived it of access to goods including commercial electronics, semiconductors and aircraft parts.

LONDON, July 18 (Reuters) - Flights to and from Britain's London Luton airport were temporarily disrupted on Monday after soaring temperatures caused a defect in its runway, prompting airlines to delay or divert their planes.

The temperature rose above 37C (98.6 Fahrenheit) in parts of England on Monday, and was forecast to hit new record highs above 38.7C on either Monday or Tuesday. Much of Europe has also been baking in a heatwave. 

The airport said its runway had reopened at 1705 GMT, after earlier suspending flights at 1522 GMT.

LONDON, July 18 (Reuters) - Britain's former finance minister Rishi Sunak held onto his lead in the race to become Britain's next prime minister on Monday as another hopeful was knocked out, leaving four candidates in an increasingly bitter contest to replace Boris Johnson.

Sunak got 115 votes in the third ballot of Conservative lawmakers on Monday, ahead of former defence minister Penny Mordaunt on 82 and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss on 71.

LONDON, July 18 (Reuters) - Russia's Gazprom has told customers in Europe it cannot guarantee gas supplies because of 'extraordinary' circumstances, according to a letter seen by Reuters, upping the ante in an economic tit-for-tat with the West over Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

The July 14 letter from the Russian state gas monopoly said it was retroactively declaring force majeure on supplies dating from June 14. The news comes as Nord Stream 1, the key pipeline delivering Russian gas to Germany and beyond, is undergoing annual maintenance meant to conclude on Thursday.