Euobserver.com

With the prolonged lack of rain and high temperatures, fears have emerged over water shortages and droughts decreasing crop yields — prompting calls to use less water and reuse urban wastewater for agricultural irrigation.

Lawmakers in France, Italy, and the US have voted to let Finland and Sweden join Nato.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) is recommending Novavax's Covid-19 vaccine carry a warning of the possibility of two types of heart inflammation, Reuters reported. The heart conditions — myocarditis and pericarditis — should be listed as new side effects for the vaccine, Nuvaxovid, based on a small number of reported cases. Novavaxsaid no concerns about heart inflammations were raised during the clinical trials and that more data would be gathered.

German chancellor Olaf Scholz also rejected Moscow's argument that gas flows were reduced due to a missing turbine, saying it was Russia that refused to take the delivery of the turbine.

China's ambassador to Belgium, Cao Zhongming, says the US has been distorting, obscuring and hollowing out the 'one-China' principle and unscrupulously undermining China's core interests. This is sheer double standards and a shameful act of bad faith.

French health authorities said Tuesday that 2,171 monkeypox cases have so far been confirmed in France, more than half of them in the Paris region. French authorities have opened the capital's first vaccination centre administering the smallpox vaccine, also effective against monkeypox, to targeted groups. Health minister Francois Braun said France has delivered 42,000 doses so far.

Moldova's pro-Russian opposition leader called for snap presidential and parliamentary elections on Tuesday, Reuters reported. Igor Dodon also told the pro-Western government to go to Moscow to negotiate cheaper natural gas from Russia as prices soar. Dodon is under house arrest on treason and corruption charges he denies. Moldova's gas company said the gas price had risen 47 percent in August.

The escalation of the war in Ukraine has forced more than 10 million people from Ukraine to cross the border into neighbouring countries since late February, the UN reported.

Mark Rutte became the longest-serving prime minister in Dutch history on Tuesday. The shrewd, centre-right political survivor spent 12 years in office. On Tuesday he notched up his 4,310th day in office, a day longer than Ruud Lubbers, who served as premier in the 1980s and early '90s. "I feel like I'm getting to the halfway point," Rutte, 55, quipped at a July news conference before leaving for summer vacation.

Spain is introducing new energy-saving measures in a week in an effort to reduce its energy consumption. Air-conditioning should not be set below 27C and heating should not be set above 19C in public buildings, shopping centres, cinemas, theatres, rail stations and airports. Doors will need to be closed so as not to waste energy, and lights in shop windows must be switched off after 10pm.

Christian Democratic Union (CDU) opposition leader Friedrich Merz dropped out of the right-wing "Transatlantic Forum" following criticism of the guest list, which includes a gun lobbyist, members of the German far-right, and Trump ally Lindsay Graham, Deutsche Welle reported. The event was due to be hosted by the German state of Baden Wurttemberg, which later pulled out saying some speakers showed "close proximity" to the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).

Lithuania has become the only EU country to publicly endorse a controversial US visit to Taiwan by House speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Former US president Donald Trump on Tuesday met with Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán ahead of a US conservative event. Trump wrote in a post on his social networking platform Truth Social that he and Orbán "discussed many interesting topics" and celebrated the Hungarian premier's election victory in April, according to The Hill. Orbán is set to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Texas this weekend.

Russia's top court on Tuesday designated Ukraine's Azov regiment as a terrorist group, Reuters reported. It paves the way for captured Azov soldiers to be tried under anti-terror laws and be jailed for up to 20 years. The Azov regiment, which has ultra-nationalist roots, has been one of the most prominent Ukrainian military groups. It said that Russia was looking for new justifications for war crimes with the ruling.

A new idea, besides a windfall tax on polluting Big Energy giants, is to make them invest their profits in their own sustainable futures. After all, these companies have a large 'sustainability debt' and extraordinary transition costs awaiting them.

International donors are playing hide and seek. Instead of stepping up their assistance programmes, richer nations are cutting overseas aid, or reallocating funds from other parts of the world towards the Ukraine crisis.

Ports in Italy cannot impound NGO migrant-rescue ships on grounds they take on board too many people to be safe, the EU court has ruled.

Nuclear stockpiles have been reduced since the Cold War — but the risk of using nuclear weapons remains high, amid conflicts and tensions between nuclear powers in Ukraine, Korean peninsula and Middle East.

Pope Francis could meet Patriarch Kirill, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church in Kazakhstan in September at a meeting of religious leaders, Reuters reports. Kirill has been accused by the EU of supporting the war in Ukraine, and only evaded personal sanctions because Hungary blocked it. The meeting would be only the second time a pope and a Russian Orthodox Church leader met since the Great Schism in 1054.

Applications to study at Irish universities from EU students has more than tripled since the Brexit referendum, the Irish Independent reported. After the 2016 UK referendum, there were 1,934 applications from EU states in 2017. That had reached 6,383 in 2022, with the upward trend accelerating since 2020/21 — the year the UK formally left the EU. Irish universities teach in the English language.