Europe

ATHENS, July 18 (Xinhua) -- Greece will file a demarche (protest presented through diplomatic channels) with Serbia over the country's failure to inform Athens about the dangerous cargo carried by the Antonov plane that crashed in northern Greece last Saturday, Greek media reported on Monday.

The crash killed the plane's eight Ukrainian crew members. Their bodies were found and identified on Sunday, the Greek news agency AMNA reported.

BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union foreign ministers are zooming in Monday on tightening the extensive package of sanctions on Russia and looking at ways to add a ban on gold exports in hopes that the measures might finally start to have a decisive impact on the war in Ukraine.

LONDON (AP) — Millions of people in Britain stayed home or sought shade Monday during the country’s first-ever extreme heat warning, as hot, dry weather that has scorched mainland Europe for the past week moved north, disrupting travel, health care and schools.

The red heat alert covers a big chunk of England and is due to last through Tuesday, when temperatures may reach 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) for the first time, posing a risk of serious illness and even death among healthy people, according to the Met Office, the U.K.’s meteorological agency.

BERLIN, July 17. /TASS/: German gas storage facilities are currently not full enough to get through the winter without Russian gas supplies, Klaus Mueller, who heads the country’s regulatory office for electricity and gas, said in an interview with Bild am Sonntag on Sunday

"The gas storage tanks are almost 65% full. That's better than in the previous weeks, but still not enough to get through the winter without Russian gas," the Federal Network Agency’s Mueller said. He also recalled that Nord Stream maintenance work was scheduled to end next Thursday.

MOSCOW, July 17. /TASS/: Russian forces destroyed a storage warehouse for Harpoon anti-ship missiles at an industrial site in Odessa with its long-range missiles, and used ground-based weapons to destroy a HIMARS launcher and a resupply vehicle, the Defense Ministry’s spokesman reported on Sunday.

"A warehouse for Harpoon anti-ship missiles supplied to Ukraine by NATO countries was destroyed with [Russian] high-precision long-range missiles at an industrial site in Odessa," Lieutenant General Igor Konashenkov said.

MOSCOW, July 17. /TASS/: Russia’s COVID-19 case tally rose by 4,664 over the past day to 18,490,296, the anti-coronavirus crisis center reported on Sunday.

As many as 705 people were hospitalized with COVID-19 in Russia over the past day, 46.3% fewer than in the previous day. The number of hospitalized patients declined in 62 regions, while in 12 other regions the figure increased. A day earlier, 1,314 people were rushed to hospitals.

VOLGOGRAD, July 17. /TASS/: The authorities in Ukraine have been irrational in trying to continue their military operation "till the last Ukrainian standing," Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev said on Sunday.

Speaking at a meeting with veterans, he said Kiev would hopefully realize sooner or later that Russia would have its goals of demilitarizing and denazifying the country attained anyway. However, he said the hope was rather weak, "since their behavior has been irrational."

PARIS, July 17 (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron warned against anti-Semitism and historical revisionism on Sunday as he commemorated victims of the Holocaust on the 80th anniversary of the Vel d'Hiv roundup of Jewish families.

On July 16-17, 1942, around 13,000 people were taken to the Winter Velodrome, the Vel d'Hiv, in Paris before being sent on to concentration camps across Europe. It was the largest mass detention of Jewish people by French police in collaboration with the Nazi German occupiers.

PARIS, July 16 (Reuters) - More than 100 French public figures have signed an open letter denouncing what they said were homophobic remarks by a recently appointed government minister.

Caroline Cayeux, appointed minister for territorial cohesion as part of France's new government formed on July 4, was asked by the Senate on Tuesday whether she maintained her opposition to the law for same-sex marriage and adoption in 2013.

At the time, she called the reform a "caprice" and "plan that goes against nature".

SKOPJE, July 16 (Reuters) - Lawmakers in North Macedonia on Saturday passed a French-brokered deal aimed at settling a dispute with Bulgaria and clearing the way to long-due European Union membership talks.

With 68 votes, the 120-seat parliament voted in favour of the agreement. Opposition lawmakers did not participate in the vote and left the room.