Latest news bulletin | July 30th – Morning
Catch up with the most important stories from around Europe and beyond - latest news, breaking news, World, Business, Entertainment, Politics, Culture, Travel.
Transcript
00:00 Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visits Bahmut near the front lines and
00:04 praises the Ukrainian special operations forces as heroic. Delegates of the German
00:11 far-right AFD party elect incumbent MEP Maximilian K to lead the group's 2024
00:17 EU parliamentary election campaign. Firemen remain on alert as wildfires in
00:22 Greece begin to show signs of dying down while Algeria begins to mourn those
00:27 killed in the flames. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced on Saturday
00:35 he had met with special operations forces in the Bahmut region close to the
00:39 front lines. In a video posted on telegram he is seen presenting the
00:43 soldiers with medals and thanking them for their service. While maintaining the
00:48 secrecy of their operations he praised their work as heroic. The president
00:53 commended them saying that even after 520 days of full-scale war they were
00:57 still standing strong. Ukraine began its counteroffensive at the beginning of
01:02 June but has come up against solid Russian defenses. On Friday at least nine
01:07 people were injured in Dnipro after a Russian strike hit an apartment block
01:11 and security services building. The attack came just hours after Moscow
01:16 announced the interception of two Ukrainian missiles over the town of
01:19 Taganrog in southwest Russia. Authorities say at least 16 people were injured by
01:25 falling debris, one of them seriously. Some 600 delegates from all over Germany
01:32 gathered in Magdeburg on Saturday for the second day of the far-right AFD
01:36 party Congress. They voted for incumbent EU Parliament member Maximilian Krah to
01:41 lead the party's 2024 European Union election campaign. Krah won the votes of
01:46 the majority of 65.7 percent. The AFD also elected Bavarian Bundestag lawmaker
01:53 Peter Bistron as runner-up candidate. The 10-year-old party has seen a surge in
01:57 popularity in recent years currently polling between 18 and 22 percent among
02:02 the German public and has 78 MPs out of 736 in the German parliament making it
02:08 the second biggest group in the Bundestag. The AFD also currently has 9
02:13 MEPs in the European Parliament but now expects to have as many as 20. On Friday
02:18 Congress attendees voted in favor of joining the far-right identity and
02:22 democracy group in the European Parliament which already includes
02:25 France's Rassemblement National led by Marine Le Pen and Italy's Lega. In
02:30 response to the AFD Congress some 2,000 people gathered in Magdeburg to protest
02:35 the party's politics. Wildfires raging across Greece for over two weeks showed
02:44 signs of slowing down on Saturday however firefighters remained on alert
02:48 battling flare-ups in various parts of the country. According to your news
02:53 reporters in Athens a blaze was still ongoing near ancient Olympia with four
02:57 villages evacuated. According to the European Commission by the 15th of July
03:02 1,000 hectares had been burnt in Greece since the start of the year. By the 27th
03:07 of July that number skyrocketed to 50,000 hectares. However European
03:12 Mediterranean countries are not the only ones feeling the heat. As Algeria
03:16 continues to battle the intense flames a funeral was held for 16 wildfire victims
03:21 in the small village of Ait Oussala. According to the Ministry of the
03:25 Interior 140 fires were recorded in 17 prefectures leaving at least 34 people
03:31 dead. Over 1,500 people have been evacuated from their villages so far.
03:39 Colombian police arrested the son and ex-daughter-in-law of President Gustavo
03:43 Petro on Saturday on charges of money laundering and illicit enrichment. This
03:48 comes as part of a high-profile probe into funds Nicolas Petro allegedly
03:52 collected during last year's election campaign. On social media President Petro
03:57 vowed he wouldn't interfere with the probe saying he was paying to see one of
04:01 his sons going to jail. In a statement the chief prosecutor's office said that
04:05 once Nicolas Petro and his ex-wife were brought before a judge prosecutors would
04:09 seek their provisional detention as they continue their investigation. Italian
04:16 football giants Juventus have been banned from European football next season.
04:21 That's the decision of European governing body UEFA after the club was
04:26 accused of breaking financial fair play rules. The charges include providing
04:31 fictitious information on the amounts of player transfers and under-reporting
04:36 employees spending and salaries which in turn allegedly increased the club's
04:40 capital by 700 million euro. Juventus say that they will not appeal the decision.