Russia has announced it will withdraw from Europe’s oldest rule-of-law body, the Council of Europe, sparking questions over the future of the Kremlin’s moratorium on the death penalty.

The Kremlin placed a moratorium on the use of the death penalty, which remains enshrined in Russian law, as a condition of Council of Europe membership in 1996.

The

Power has been cut to the Chernobyl nuclear plant, Ukraine said Wednesday, but the UN's atomic watchdog said there was "no critical impact on safety."

The news from the site of the world's worst nuclear disaster came as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said data transmission was also lost at the Zaporizhzhia atomic plant, Europe's

Dutch brewer Heineken, Danish beer-maker Carlsberg, and Universal Music Group are some of the latest Western firms to halt operations in Russia over Moscow's war in Ukraine.

On Thursday, Japanese gaming giants PlayStation and Nintendo announced they would suspend shipments to Russia too, joining the hundreds of multinationals who have taken action. 

Motor racing driver Nikita Mazepin, sacked by the Haas Formula One team after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, on Wednesday was added to the list of Russians sanctioned by the European Union.

His father, oligarch Dmitry Mazepin, the owner and chief executive of chemical giant Uralchem, was also sanctioned.

Dmitry Mazepin "is engaged in activities in