Many people in Kyiv describe the recent attacks as the most terrifying of the war, and even residents who previously ignored sirens have been driven into bomb shelters in the subway system. The attacks have also strengthened the solidarity among Kyiv residents.
An Iranian attack on an air base in Qatar key to the U.S. military likely hit a geodesic dome housing equipment used by the Americans for secure communications, satellite images analyzed Friday by The Associated Press show. The U.S. military and Qatar did not immediately respond to requests for comment over the damage, which so far has not been publicly acknowledged. The Iranian attack on Al Udeid Air Base outside of Doha, Qatar's capital, on June 23 came as a response to the American bombing of three nuclear sites in Tehran — and provided the Islamic Republic a way to retaliate that quickly led to a ceasefire brokered by President Donald Trump ending the 12-day Iran-Israel war.
Polish prosecutors launched a preliminary investigation after a far-right lawmaker described the gas chambers at the Auschwitz death camp as a “fake." Grzegorz Braun, a member of the European Parliament, has previously been accused of antisemitism, and extinguished Hanukkah candles in parliament with a fire extinguisher in 2023. Speaking to Poland's Wnet radio on Thursday, Braun said that “ritual murder is a fact, and such a thing as Auschwitz with its gas chambers is unfortunately a fake,” news agency PAP reported.
KYIV (Reuters) -Kyiv will allocate 260 million hryvnias ($6.2 million) for a drone interceptor program to defend the capital's skies from Russian drones, city authorities said on Friday. Russia has stepped up its combined attacks on the Ukrainian capital in recent weeks, launching hundreds of drones and missiles in hours-long night assaults which caused damage to most of the city districts. "These funds will be used not only to purchase equipment, but also to create an effective response system," the head of Kyiv city military administration Tymur Tkachenko wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio relayed President Donald Trump’s “disappointment and frustration” during a “frank conversation” with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Malaysia on Thursday but new ideas to drive an end to the conflict were also discussed, the top US diplomat told reporters.
NAIROBI (Reuters) -Kenya's President William Ruto has approved a new chairperson and commissioners to head the elections commission, a legal notice showed, filling positions of critical influence in a country with a long history of contentious polls. The East African nation's next general election will be held in 2027, but Ruto is already under pressure from street protests led by young Kenyans dissatisfied with high living costs, corruption and police brutality. The new chairman and six commissioners appointed to the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission will serve for the next four years, according to the notice issued late on Thursday.
BERLIN (Reuters) -Last weekend, Germany's far-right lawmakers vowed to dress smartly, minimise parliamentary cat-calling, and signed up to a short manifesto notably omitting a call for repatriation of some immigrants that helped fuel their February election success. The Alternative for Germany (AfD) is trying a tactical pivot away from the mix of attention-grabbing shock policies and provocative rowdiness that helped it become the second-largest parliamentary party, in a bid to go more mainstream and translate popularity into power, political commentators and a party insider said. Being the largest opposition party has conferred privileges like being able to respond first to the government in parliament, but in Germany power comes from being in coalitions, and every other party rules out governing with the AfD.
KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) -The Southeast Asian bloc ASEAN has agreed that an election in Myanmar was not a priority and is urging the country's ruling junta to adhere to its peace commitments instead, Malaysia's foreign minister said on Friday. Myanmar, an ASEAN member, is in the grips of an escalating civil war and critics have derided the junta's planned election this year as an attempt to prolong military rule through proxies in the absence of a viable political opposition. Minister Mohamad Hasan said members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which Malaysia is chairing, want Myanmar to honour a "five-point consensus" peace plan its junta agreed to in 2021, months after a coup against Aung San Suu Kyi's civilian government.
Police believe search aircraft are their best chance of finding German tourist Carolina Wilga a day after her van was found abandoned in the Australian Outback, an officer said Friday. The last known sighting of the 26-year-old backpacker was June 29 at a general store in the wheat farming town of Beacon, 320 kilometers (200 miles) northeast of the Western Australia state capital Perth. The discovery of her van Thursday in wilderness in the Karroun Hill Nature Reserve, around 100 kilometers (60 miles) north of Beacon, had focused the search area, Western Australia Police Force Acting Insp.
One of Russia’s most powerful men, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, is set to visit North Korea this weekend, in a sign of deepening relations between Moscow and Pyongyang as North Korea gets pulled deeper into Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Visitors and staff at two national parks in the U.S. West have been evacuated because of wildfires. Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, about 260 miles (418 kilometers) southwest of Denver, closed Thursday morning after lighting sparked blazes on both rims, the park said. The wildfire on the South Rim has burned 2.5 square miles (6.5 square kilometers), with no containment of the perimeter.
Top South Korean, U.S. and Japanese military officers urged North Korea to cease all unlawful activities that threaten regional security, as the three nations flew advanced warplanes for a joint exercise in a show of force against the North. The development came Friday as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was to travel to North Korea amid booming military and other cooperation between the two countries that have raised concerns among their neighbors. During their regular meeting in Seoul on Friday, the chairmen of the joint chiefs of staff from South Korea, the U.S. and Japan discussed North Korea's deployment of troops to Russia to support its war against Ukraine and Russia's potential transfer of military technology to North Korea in return.
BERLIN (Reuters) -Germany plans to buy 15 additional F-35 fighter jets, Politico reported on Friday citing several people familiar with the matter, a move that would increase the country's planned fleet of the U.S.-made jet to 50. The report comes amid tensions between Germany and France on the joint Franco-German fighter jet FCAS partnership, after a report earlier this week that France now wants a workshare of 80%. A spokesperson for the German Defence Ministry said it generally did not comment "on possible procurement plans before they have gone through parliament."
Sebeiba is a core tradition of the Tuareg people, native to the Sahara and parts of West Africa. The Tuareg are Muslim, and their native language is Tamasheq, though many speak some combination of French, Modern Standard Arabic, Algerian Arabic (Darija) and English.
Asian shares were mixed in cautious trading Friday after Wall Street closed at an all-time high with Delta Air Lines kicking off earnings season with a solid outlook for the rest of 2025, spurring an airline stock rally. Chinese markets were sharply higher, buoyed by signs of possible additional stimulus measures in China and Goldman Sachs Group's upgrade of Hong Kong stocks to market-weight.
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Cash is the lifeblood of the Gaza Strip’s shattered economy, and like all other necessities in this war-torn territory — food, fuel, medicine — it is in extremely short supply. With nearly every bank branch and ATM inoperable, people have become reliant on an unrestrained network of powerful cash brokers to get money for daily expenses — and commissions on those transactions have soared to about 40%. “The people are crying blood because of this,” said Ayman al-Dahdouh, a school director living in Gaza City.
Thirty-one men working in a massive underground tunnel in Los Angeles were rescued Wednesday night after a portion of the structure collapsed, officials said.
The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Oracle will offer federal agencies a 75% discount on its license-based software and a "substantial" discount on its cloud service through the end of November. Google's cloud contract is likely "to land in a similar spot", the Financial Times said, citing a senior official at the General Services Administration, adding that equivalent discounts from Microsoft's Azure and Amazon Web Services are expected to follow soon.
BEIJING (Reuters) -China urged Cambodia and Thailand to resolve their border dispute through friendly dialogue, offering to play a constructive role by upholding an "objective and fair" position, its foreign ministry said. Foreign Minister Wang Yi urged peaceful coexistence between the neighbours during a meeting on Thursday with Thai counterpart Maris Sangiampongsa on the sidelines of an ASEAN summit in Malaysia, the ministry said in a statement. "China is willing to uphold an objective and fair position and play a constructive role for the harmonious coexistence between Thailand and Cambodia," Wang said.