Euobserver.com

Kosovo has given ethnic Serb citizens two months to switch their car number plates from Serbian ones to Kosovar ones, even though the last time it tried to enforce the rule it led to violent clashes in the north and escalating tension with Serbia. "I don't think they will have a big success," Serbian president Aleksandar Vučić said, Reuters reports, while also stepping up training of border-area Serb soldiers.

Russian firm Gazprom paid the Kremlin €10bn after enjoying record-level profits of €42bn in the first six months of 2022 despite the war in Ukraine. The EU had initially spoken of stopping gas purchases as part of sanctions, but later said it can only phase out Russian gas use in the long term. It also accused Russia of artificially holding back supply to manipulate gas market prices.

The period between 2021 and 2022 saw record-breaking catastrophic disasters in all corners of the world. Some 10,000 people lost their lives, but in a new report UN researchers write much of this can be prevented.

Russian merry-making on EU holidays this summer despite the war in Ukraine has prompted Europe to slash tourist visas in its first sanctions aimed at the Russian public.

The price of food, alcohol and tobacco also rose with a rate of 10.6 percent compared with 9.8 percent in July, with the recent heatwaves and drought in Europe adding to the price increase.

Scores of European lawmakers from all major parties are demanding Serbia allow an LGBTI march to take place in Belgrade — after Serbia's president Aleksandar Vučić said the September the event would be "cancelled or postponed".

So-called Russian tourists should not be able to travel to the EU and Schengen countries. Tourist visas already issued should be suspended — and stop issuing new ones, says Urmas Paet, vice-chair of the European Parliament's foreign affairs committee.

Russia halted gas supplies via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline (connecting Russia and Europe under the Baltic Sea) on Wednesday, for three days. The unscheduled maintenance works were announced by Russian state-controlled energy giant Gazprom in August — raising concerns over supply security and energy-rationing in Europe. Germany will be able to deal with this outage if flows are restored on Saturday, the German network regulator said, Reuters reported.

The group of experts from the UN nuclear watchdog in charge of inspecting the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in southern Ukraine arrived in the Ukrainian-held city of Zaporizhzhia on Wednesday. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safety mission, led by the organisation's chief Rafael Grossi, will assess the plant's security systems and station's facilities, located in a territory which has seen repeated shelling since the Russians took control in March.

Hungary says it has signed a deal with Russian energy giant Gazprom for extra natural gas on top of its current supplies, government spokesman Zoltán Kovács tweeted. Hungary's foreign affairs minister Péter Szijjártó said that in September and October, Gazprom will deliver a maximum of 5.8m cubic meters more gas per day to Hungary via Serbia, on top of the normal 3.5bn cubic metres of gas per year by Gazprom.

The UN Human Rights Committee said Spain "had violated the political rights of former Catalan government and parliament members by suspending them from public duties prior to a conviction following the independence referendum in 2017." Spain had prosecuted and sentenced Oriol Junqueras i Vies, former vice-president of Catalonia, and three former ministers, Raül Romeva i Rueda, Josep Rull i Andreu and Jordi Turull i Negre.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell accused Russia of "gambling with the nuclear security" of Ukraine. Russia has troops deployed at the Zaporizhzhia power plant. "It is part of this systemic crisis. They [Russians] are playing games," he said, in comments ahead of an informal ministerial meeting in Prague on Wednesday. The International Atomic Energy Agency has sent a mission to inspect the plant, Europe's largest.

Jonas Grimheden, Frontex's fundamental rights officer, told the Guardian newspaper in an interview that there should be more vigilant monitoring of rights in Greece when it comes to how authorities treat asylum seekers. "It has been clear to me that Greece is one of the countries that needs enhanced monitoring," he said. Greece is accused of illegally pushing asylum seekers back.

Russia further slashes gas deliveries in the coming days as flows through the Nord Stream pipeline -- connecting the EU to Russia -- will be halted for three days starting on Wednesday (31 August). Concerns are more cutoffs are coming. Hours ahead of the outage, Russia state-owned Gazprom notified French utility Engie that it would halt supplies from Thursday because of disagreement over paymennts.

Leaders from seven Baltic Sea countries signed on Tuesday at a summit in Denmark a deal to increase offshore wind capacity in the Baltic Sea sevenfold by 2030 — enough to power between 22 and 30 million households. Mateusz Morawiecki (Poland), Gitanas Nausėda (Lithuania), Krišjānis Kariņš (Latvia), Kaja Kallas (Estonia), Sanna Marin (Finland), Mette Frederiksen (Denmark), and EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen were present.

Mikhail Gorbachev, who helped to end the Cold War and was the last leader of the Soviet Union, has died at the age of 91, Russian news agencies reported, citing medical sources. "Gorbachev died this evening after a serious and long illness," the Central Clinical Hospital in Moscow said late on Tuesday, as quoted by the Interfax news agency.

As a Green MEP, ex-environment minister and former vice prime-minister of Sweden, Isabella Lovin spent many years advocating for ocean conservation and the welfare of fisheries dependent communities. The UN Ocean Conference in Lisbon was all words, no action.

As Europe re-opens for business, the tragic death of a three-month old infant at the squalid and over-crowded Ter Apel refugee centre in the Netherlands has sparked shock, horror and recrimination.

The EU Commission said anti-corruption measures, and "adequate audit and control arrangements" are still points of discussion with the Hungarian government of Viktor Orbán.

EU officials are warning of devastating impacts of a sustained drought hitting the Horn of Africa and the Sahel, as humanitarian workers face a dilemma of having to choose to help the starving over the hungry.