Tensions spiraled over the separatist region of South Ossetia after Georgia said four people were wounded in a South Ossetian attack and the Georgian president warned that escalated fighting could bring a war with Russia.
"If conflict flares up in South Ossetia, it won't be an internal conflict in Georgia, it will be a conflict between Georgia and Russia," said Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili.
Some 80 percent of South Ossetia's residents hold Russian passports and Saakashvili's vow to regain control of the region, de-facto independent since 1992, has strained relations between Georgia and its huge neighbor.
South Ossetian forces this week seized and disarmed 38 Georgian soldiers, but released all but three a day later. Georgian, Russian and South Ossetian forces all have peacekeeping contingents in the region. On Saturday, three Georgian Interior Ministry servicemen and a civilian were wounded by grenade and automatic weapons firing in the village of Ardvisi, near South Ossetia, said a police official of the Georgian region that includes Ardvisi.
South Ossetia on Friday said one of its policemen was wounded in an attack by unknown assailants.
‘ABSURD MISTAKE’: The election commission said that there had been a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations ran short of ballot papers South Korean riot police yesterday cleared protesters from a Seoul polling station after a 35-hour blockade sparked by a shortage of ballot papers during local elections earlier this week. Wednesday’s election was the first nationwide vote since South Korean President Lee Jae-myung took office following the ouster of Yoon Suk-yeol over his short-lived martial law declaration. Lee’s ruling Democratic Party swept most races, but failed to flip the crucial Seoul mayoral seat. The South Korean National Election Commission apologized, blaming a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations in Seoul ran short of ballot papers. Some polling stations stayed open until 10pm to
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
A Sherpa guide was found crawling to base camp on Mount Everest a week after he went missing and was reunited with his family, who had given up hope he would return. Dawa Sherpa was last seen on Friday last week descending the mountain, but he did not reach base camp even though his client did. The pair were among the last climbers on the mountain as the climbing season came to an end and the route was dismantled. Dawa was located by a cleaning crew on Thursday morning as he was crawling down the snowy slopes around the Khumbu Icefall, just above
Chinese authorities are snuffing out any remembrance of the deadly 1989 military crackdown on student-led pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square, which happened 37 years ago yesterday, in a further tightening of a years-long campaign to erase what happened from public memory. Police told relatives of the victims they would not be allowed to visit a cemetery in Beijing on the anniversary of the crackdown, a person with knowledge of the matter said. Relatives of the victims visited the cemetery on the anniversary for more than 30 years to read memorial statements with police keeping watch, Amnesty International said. Hundreds of people,
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