Europe

LONDON, July 5 (Reuters) - British Health Secretary Sajid Javid resigned on Tuesday, plunging Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government into crisis.

Javid said he had lost confidence in Johnson's ability to govern in the national interest after a series of scandals, saying he could "no longer continue in good conscience".

He said that many lawmakers and the public had lost confidence in Johnson's ability to govern in the national interest.

LONDON, July 5 (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was fighting for his political survival on Tuesday after finance minister Rishi Sunak and another senior minister abruptly resigned over the latest scandal to blight his administration.

Sunak and health minister Sajid Javid sent resignation letters to the prime minister within minutes of each other in which both took aim at his ability to run an administration that adhered to standards.

SLOVIANSK, Ukraine/KYIV, July 5 (Reuters) - Russian forces struck targets across Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region on Tuesday, a day after President Vladimir Putin declared victory in the neighbouring province of Luhansk after months of gruelling attritional warfare in which both sides lost many men.

VALLETTA, July 5 (Reuters) - The man accused of detonating a car bomb that killed a prominent Maltese journalist has confessed to the crime in an interview with a Reuters reporter and says he will soon implicate others in plotting to assassinate her.

Speaking from jail in his first comment on the case, George Degiorgio said if he had known more about Daphne Caruana Galizia - the journalist he and two others are accused of killing in 2017 - then he would have asked for more money to carry out the hit.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Two suspects in the slaying a year ago of Dutch crime reporter Peter R. de Vries have been arrested overseas, prosecutors in the Netherlands announced Tuesday, a day after the suspected “director” of the shocking killing was detained.

The national prosecutor’s office said a 27-year-old man was arrested on the former Dutch Caribbean colony of Curaçao on Monday and a 26-year-old man was detained in Spain on the same day. Both men are Dutch nationals who will be flown to the Netherlands to face justice.

CANAZEI, Italy (AP) — Rescuers using drones resumed the search Tuesday for an estimated 13 hikers unaccounted-for following a powerful avalanche in northern Italy that killed at least seven people and is being blamed in large part on rising temperatures that are melting glaciers.

After rain hampered the search Monday, sunny weather on Tuesday allowed helicopters to bring more rescue teams up to the site on the Marmolada glacier, east of Bolzano in the Dolomites mountain range, even as hopes dimmed of finding anyone alive.

BRUSSELS (AP) — The 30 NATO allies signed off on the accession protocols for Sweden and Finland on Tuesday, sending the membership bids of the two nations to the alliance capitals for legislative approvals — and possible political trouble in Turkey.

The move further increases Russia’s strategic isolation in the wake of its invasion of neighboring Ukraine in February and military struggles there since.

“This is truly a historic moment for Finland, for Sweden and for NATO,” the head of the alliance, Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, said.

(AP) --- After more than four months of ferocious fighting, Russia claimed a key victory: full control over one of the two provinces in Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland.

But Moscow’s seizure of the last major stronghold of Ukrainian resistance in Luhansk province came at a steep price. The critical question now is whether Russia can muster enough strength for a new offensive to complete its capture of the Donbas and make gains elsewhere in Ukraine.

Pokrovsk (Ukraine), Jul 4 (AP-PTI) Russian forces tried Monday to press their offensive deeper into eastern Ukraine after taking control of a key stronghold.

The Ukrainian military confirmed that its forces had withdrawn from the city of Lysychansk, the last bulwark of Ukrainian resistance in the Luhansk province, one of the two regions that make up the country's eastern industrial heartland of Donbas. The Russians also control about half of Donetsk, the second province of Donbas.

Copenhagen, Jul 4 (AP-PTI) A gunman opened fire inside a busy shopping mall in the Danish capital on Sunday, killing several people and wounding several others, police said.

A 22-year-old Danish man was arrested after the shooting, Copenhagen police inspector S ren Thomassen told reporters, adding there was no indication that anyone else was involved, though police were still investigating.