Euobserver.com

The United Nations Environment Programme has already warned that Ukraine will be left with a toxic environmental legacy for generations to come.

Europe is experiencing an extreme heatwave throughout the continent. More than 1,000 people have died because of record-breaking temperatures and devastating wildfires.

Pro-Kremlin biker gang the Night Wolves will no longer be able to ride around Europe under new Russia sanctions, which also strike at Sberbank and the mayor of Moscow.

EU countries agreed to open accession negotiations with North Macedonia and Albania after a green light by the EU ambassadors' meeting on Monday. "This is truly a historic moment," Czech ambassador Edita Hrda said, whose country heads the EU's rotating presidency. On Tuesday, EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and Czech PM Petr Fiala will welcome Albanian premier Edi Rama, and North Macedonia's PM Dimitar Kovačevski in Brussels.

EU foreign ministers agreed Monday another €500m of EU funding to supply arms to Ukraine, taking the bloc's security support to a total of €2.5bn since Russia invaded Ukraine. The money is designed to help EU countries to jointly buy equipment and supplies. EU rules prevent countries to use the bloc's seven-year budget for military operations, but the €5bn European Peace Facility can be used, which is now half exhausted.

Russia's Gazprom has told European customers in a letter that it cannot guarantee gas supplies because of "extraordinary" circumstances, Reuters reported. The Russian state gas monopoly said that it was retroactively declaring force majeure from 14 June. Nord Stream 1, the key pipeline delivering Russian gas to Germany and beyond, is undergoing 10 days of maintenance. The letter added to fears that Russia might not restart supplies in the pipeline.

Former finance minister Rishi Sunak widened his lead in the latest round of voting on Monday by Conservative MPs to decide Britain's next prime minister, AFP reported. Sunak won the support of 115 Tory lawmakers, followed by Penny Mordaunt with 82 votes, Liz Truss on 71, Kemi Badenoch on 58 and Tom Tugendhat on 31. MPs will keep voting. A television debate was scrapped after Sunak and Truss pulled out.

Shorter women will be able to join Spain's police forces after the country's top court ruled Monday that a minimum 1.61 metre height requirement for female officers is discriminatory, Reuters reported. The case was filed by a woman who was barred from the selection tests in 2017 because she was four cm shorter. 25 percent of women are below the threshold, while three percent of Spanish men are below it.

Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelensky appointed an experienced official as acting head of the security agency, the Guardian reported. Zelensky's childhood friend Ivan Bakanov, who had been in charge of the 30,000-strong state security service, the SBU, was suspended on Sunday over claims of failure to counter Russian infiltration. Zelensky announced Monday that Vasyl Maliuk, SBU's former first deputy head who led the anti-corruption and organised crime unit, would take over.

Russian president Vladimir Putin and Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday are expected to discuss Ukrainian grain export at their meeting in Tehran, Reuters reported. Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, and the UN are set to sign a deal later this week aimed at resuming the shipping of grain from Ukraine across the Black Sea, which has been all but halted after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February, upsetting global supplies.

Legal scholar Sahar Aziz says people who identify as Muslim are often perceived in racial terms, like black and brown people, in white-dominated societies. That makes Muslims on both sides of the Atlantic the subject of similar forms of racism.

The European Commission will soon propose a legal framework allowing companies to buy offsetting carbon removals from farmers. Despite good intentions, lessons from similar projects in the US suggest that such schemes could end up doing more harm than good

The tax increase comes when inflation is at a two-decade high at 11.7 percent, the forint is at record lows, and rising energy prices are making matters worse for households.

EU ambassadors will hold initial talks on new Russian sanctions on Monday, amid proposals to ban gold exports and blacklist more individuals.

The Russian media worker Marina Ovsyannikova, who became famous for holding an anti-war poster on live state television in March, has been reportedly detained by Russian police, DW reported on Sunday. Her lawyer, Dmitri Zakhvatov, confirmed the news to the Russian state-run Ria-Novosti news agency, arguing that her arrest was "linked one way or another to her act of protest." Back in March, she was also briefly detained.

North Macedonia is to finally open accession talks with the EU on Tuesday after MPs backed a deal to end Bulgaria's veto.

Canada on Sunday sent a repaired turbine of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline to Germany by plane, Reuters reported on Monday. Russian energy giant Gazprom had asked Germany for the repaired turbine to restart gas flows, but it may still take five to seven days to reach Russia, according to the Russian newspaper Kommersant. Canada was slammed by Ukraine for granting the turbine an exemption from sanctions imposed on Russia.

Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelensky fired the chief of the country's national security agency, the SBU, Ivan Bakanov, and the state prosecutor general, Iryna Venediktova, citing close ties with Russia, Reuters reported on Sunday. The firings and the appointment of Oleksiy Symonenko as the new prosecutor general were announced in executive orders on the president's website. In a Telegram post, Zelenskiy said there are 651 cases of alleged treason under investigation.

UK prime minister Boris Johnson has come under fire for missing an emergency ministerial meeting on heatwave preparedness on Saturday, DW reported. Johnson, who is set to step down in September, took a weekend break at his country retreat where he was also hosting a farewell party. Temperatures are expected to reach 40 degrees Celsius in England this week, which has triggered the country's first-ever "red" extreme heat warning.

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen will visit Baku on Monday in a bid to seal a gas export deal, Reuters reported. "Amid Russia's continued weaponisation of its energy supplies, diversification of our energy imports is a priority," the commission tweeted. The bilateral deal aims to increase exports to the bloc, via the Southern Gas Corridor, with at least 20 billion cubic metres of gas annually by 2027.