DolphinMath

Gunmen opened fire at a synagogue, an Orthodox church and a police post in Russia's North Caucasus region of Dagestan on Sunday, killing six policemen and injuring 12, the region's interior ministry was quoted as saying.

The ministry, quoted by Russian news agencies, said two gunmen had been shot dead as the incidents unfolded. An Orthodox priest was also reported to have been killed.

MOSCOW, June 23 (Reuters) - Russia said on Sunday that the United States was responsible for a Ukrainian attack on the Russian-annexed Crimean peninsula with five U.S.-supplied missiles that killed at least five people including three children and injured 124 more.

The Russian Defence Ministry said four of the U.S.-delivered Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) missiles, equipped with cluster warheads, were shot down by air defence systems and the ammunition of a fifth had detonated in mid-air.

June 22 (Reuters) - Reuters denied on Saturday that it had reported that Israel would attack Lebanon within 48 hours, after reports circulated on social media citing the news agency as saying this.

"Any claims that Reuters reported that Israel will attack Lebanon within the next 48 hours are false. Reuters did not report this," a Reuters spokesperson said.

In the past several weeks, I have watched dozens of sleek U.S. military planes descend over Toussaint Louverture International Airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where I live. They were the first flights to land since gangs blockaded and halted commercial air traffic in March. U.S. news reports suggest that the aircraft contained civilian contractors and supplies to pave the way for the deployment of a Kenyan-led security mission to Haiti, which is expected to begin any day now.

But no one has informed Haitians who or what was on board. Even the members of Haiti’s new transitional government told me that they did not know precisely what the United States was flying into the country. Although the Haitian members of the presidential council have met with Kenyan and Haitian officials to discuss the force, they said they have not provided input to U.S. officials. Aides to newly installed Prime Minister Garry Conille confirmed that he has had no say on decisions related to the mission. It remains unclear what the force’s specific goals are or how it can contribute to rebuilding the Haitian state.

PODGORICA, June 21 (Reuters) - A major power outage hit Montenegro, Bosnia, Albania and most of Croatia's coast on Friday, disrupting businesses, shutting down traffic lights and leaving people sweltering without air conditioning in the middle of a heatwave.

Montenegro's energy minister said the shutdown was caused by a sudden increase in power consumption brought on by high temperatures, and by the heat itself overloading systems. Power distribution is linked across the Balkans for transfers and trading.

The Chinese coast guard came in small boats with axes, long knives and spears.

They used the crude weapons to slash and puncture the Philippine military’s rubber craft. One Chinese boat rammed a Philippine boat at high speed, severing the thumb of a Filipino seaman who was holding on to the side of his ride.

Video footage isn’t paywalled for those interested in viewing it without a subscription or an archive link.

Hamas cannot agree to any deal unless Israel makes a "clear" commitment to a permanent ceasefire and a complete withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, a senior official from the Palestinian militant group said on Tuesday.

Qatar, which alongside the United States and Egypt has been mediating talks between Hamas and Israel, has also urged Israel to provide a clear position that has the backing of its entire government to reach a deal.

A foreign citizen was detained in Romania's capital Bucharest on Monday after throwing a Molotov cocktail outside the Israeli embassy, causing no damage or casualties, police said.

The Romanian Intelligence Service said its anti-terrorism officers caught the 34-year-old suspect, who allegedly also threatened he will set himself on fire, and handed him over to police.

Hadi Matar, the man accused of nearly fatally stabbing British-American writer Salman Rushdie, is negotiating a plea agreement with both US state and federal prosecutors that could shed light on whether a foreign government or terrorist organization was involved in the attack, officials involved in the case told Semafor.

Matar is scheduled to go on trial for attempted murder this September in a western New York courthouse not far from the Chautauqua Institution where Rushdie was assaulted while giving a speech in August 2022 at a summer cultural festival. But federal prosecutors from the US Attorney’s Office are separately investigating whether Matar, 26, was part of a broader conspiracy to assassinate the writer, according to lawyers and US officials involved in the case. The revolutionary founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei, issued a fatwa, or religious decree, in 1989, calling for Rushdie’s death on the grounds that his novel, The Satanic Verses, was blasphemous against Islam.

In 1989, blowback was swift; alienation today is ‘systematic, progressive, long-term.’

China’s 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy activists sparked a seminal crisis in Beijing’s relationship with the West. On the massacre’s 35th anniversary, China’s leaders face familiar international blowback over their conduct.

Instead of gunfire, today’s sources of discomfort about China are a mix of its aggressive industrial policy and militarization toward neighbors, plus a national-security agenda from Chinese leader Xi Jinping that has curtailed personal freedoms at home and shaped affairs abroad.

Security services say spate of fires and infrastructure attacks could be part of systemic attempt by Russia to destabilise continent

Security services around Europe are on alert to a potential new weapon of Russia’s war – arson and sabotage – after a spate of mystery fires and attacks on infrastructure in the Baltics, Germany and the UK.

When a fire broke out in Ikea in Vilnius in Lithuania this month, few passed any remarks until the Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, suggested it could have been the work of a foreign saboteur.

The White House on Tuesday provided the most complete definition yet of what it considers a "major ground operation" in Rafah that could trigger a change in United States policy toward Israel, and said Israel's actions there have not yet reached that level.

"We have not seen them smash into Rafah - we have not seen them go in with large units, large numbers of troops in columns and formations in some sort of coordinated maneuver against multiple targets on the ground. That is a major ground operation. We have not seen that," White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters at a briefing.