FRANCE
Cars explode at synagogue
Two vehicles set on fire outside a synagogue in southern France yesterday caused an explosion in which a police officer was injured, authorities said. Minister of the Interior Gerald Darmanin called the incident near the Beth Yaacov synagogue in La Motte, near Montpellier on the southern coast, “an obviously criminal act.” He said that “all means are being deployed to find the perpetrator.” Darmanin and Prime Minister Gabriel Attal were to travel to the site of the explosion later yesterday. The explosion was likely caused by a gas canister hidden in one of the vehicles, police said.
ITALY
Sicily opens yacht probe
Sicilian prosecutors yesterday said they were investigating potential crimes of negligent shipwreck and manslaughter after a superyacht sank, killing seven people, but added that their probe was at the early stages. In a news conference, state prosecutor Ambrogio Cartosio identified no suspects and said “we do not exclude anything” after the Bayesian went down in a storm on Monday. UK tech tycoon Mike Lynch, his teenage daughter and five others were killed.
NIGERIA
Kidnapped students freed
Twenty Nigerian medical students kidnapped as they went to a convention have been freed more than a week after their abduction, police said yesterday. Gunmen seized the 20 on Thursday last week as they traveled to a conference in Benue State, in the center of the country, and later demanded a ransom, police said in a statement. Police said they had “confirmed the release of the 20 students from the University of Maiduguri and University of Jos.” No details were given on how the students were freed, but the country’s police chief had this week deployed a “tactical squad” in Benue as part of efforts to find the latest victims of a rising wave of abductions in Africa’s most populous country.
UNITED STATES
Meta warns campaigns
Meta on Friday said it had warned US presidential campaigns to be wary after it discovered an Iran-linked hacking attempt using the WhatsApp messaging service. The announcement is the latest from a tech giant of hacking threats ahead of the November election between Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump, after Google and Microsoft earlier uncovered similar attempts attributed to Iran. WhatsApp accounts linked to an Iranian “threat actor” sent messages pretending to be technical support for AOL, Google, Yahoo or Microsoft, Meta said. “This malicious activity originated in Iran and attempted to target individuals in Israel, Palestine, Iran, the United States and the UK,” it said in a post online. “This effort appeared to have focused on political and diplomatic officials, and other public figures, including some associated with administrations of President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump.”
RUSSIA
Snipers kill inmates
National Guard snipers on Friday killed four inmates who had stabbed four prison guards to death and held others as hostages while declaring allegiance to the Islamic State group. The Federal Penitentiary Service said the inmates took eight prison guards and four inmates hostage. They stabbed four of the guards, three of whom died on the spot and the fourth one later died at a hospital, it said. Three other guards were hospitalized with injuries, it added. The National Guard said its snipers “neutralized” all four attackers, freeing all the hostages.
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
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