Jokeroo VideosA lightning strike destroys an overhead power line in Russia. This cameraman caught it at just the right time!
Georgia's ruling party on Friday accused the United States of pursuing a policy of "threats and blackmail" against Georgia over its decision to impose visa restrictions against members of parliament who back a bill on "foreign agents". U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said on Thursday that the U.S. was imposing new visa restrictions on Georgia and launching a review of bilateral cooperation between the countries over the bill, which would require organisations receiving more than 20% of their funding from abroad to register as "foreign agents". Blinken, announcing the actions in a statement, said the law would "stifle the exercise of freedoms of association and expression" and impede independent media organizations' work.
A nighttime Russian attack destroyed train tracks and rolling stock in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region, officials said Friday, and authorities organized the evacuation of children from the area that is being pummeled by the Kremlin’s forces in a powerful new offensive. Authorities have evacuated more than 11,000 people from the Kharkiv region since Russia launched an offensive there on May 10, regional Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said. Officials on Friday announced the mandatory evacuation over the next 60 days of 123 orphans and children living without their parents in the area.
AL-ARISH, Egypt (Reuters) - Some of the food supplies waiting to enter the Gaza Strip from Egypt have begun to rot as the Rafah border crossing remains shut to aid deliveries for a third week and people inside the Palestinian enclave face worsening hunger. Rafah was a main entry point for humanitarian relief as well as some commercial supplies before Israel stepped up its military offensive on the Gazan side of the border on May 6 and took control of the crossing from the Palestinian side. Egyptian officials and sources say humanitarian operations are at risk from military activity and that Israel needs to hand the crossing back to Palestinians before it starts operating again.
Renewed concerns over the path of interest rates had prompted the Dow's worst day since March 2023.
UK police have arrested 16 people at a protest organised by a pro-Palestinian student group at Oxford University, in the latest flare-up on a prestigious campus over the war in Gaza."Instead of engaging in dialogue with her students, the vice-chancellor chose to evacuate the building, place it on lockdown, and call the police to make arrests," a spokesperson for the Oxford Action for Palestine (OA4P) protest group said.
The office manager of the Hong Kong trade office in London and another man will go on trial in February for allegedly helping Hong Kong authorities gather intelligence in the U.K. a judge said Friday. Chung Biu Yuen, 63, and Chi Leung Peter Wai, 38, appeared at London’s Central Criminal Court for a preliminary hearing, charged with agreeing to undertake information gathering, surveillance and acts of deception that were likely to materially assist a foreign intelligence service between December 2023 and May 2.
The Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives Agriculture Committee passed its version of a $1.5 trillion farm spending bill late Thursday night with few Democratic votes, prolonging a standoff between the parties over key nutrition, agriculture, and climate policies. Congress failed in 2023 to pass a new farm bill, an omnibus legislative package passed every five years. The House bill would have to be reconciled with a Senate bill led by Democrats and without strong bipartisan support, the House version has a slim chance of becoming law.
Countries trying to thrash out a global agreement on handling future pandemics are hoping to seal the deal Friday after weeks of creeping progress in exhausting talks.The main disputes revolve around issues of access and equity: access to pathogens detected within countries, and to pandemic-fighting products such as vaccines derived from that knowledge.
More than 100 people are feared dead in a remote village in northern Papua New Guinea after it was hit by a major landslide, officials said Friday, as rescue workers scramble to reach the site.
The French civil aviation authority said Friday it had ordered airlines operating at Paris Orly airport to cancel 70 percent of flights ahead of a weekend air traffic controller strike.The stoppage comes only a month after a massive air traffic controller strike affecting several French airports that ended with a deal between the civil aviation authority and the biggest air traffic controller union, the SNCTA. But the second-biggest union, UNSA-ICNA, said staffing levels were still inadequate.
When British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced on Wednesday that the UK would hold a general election on July 4, many observers wondered: why now?
Two prominent Texas Republicans are looking to settle political scores within their own party in the primary runoff elections on Tuesday, when voters will decide nearly three dozen unresolved races from the state’s March 5 primary. For entirely different reasons, Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton have put the weight of their statewide political organizations behind efforts to unseat Republican state representatives who have crossed them on policy or political grounds. Abbott is focusing on GOP members who helped defeat his 2023 education plan that would have allowed spending taxpayer money on private schools.
Russian forces have become "bogged down" trying to capture the Ukrainian border town of Vovchansk but have intensified their offensive elsewhere on the eastern front, Ukraine's top general said on Friday.President Volodymyr Zelensky visited the region's capital on Friday to discuss the battle for Vovchansk, a town that sits fewer than five kilometres (three miles) from the border.
The annual Jewish pilgrimage on Tunisia's island of Djerba began Friday with low turnout amid heightened security concerns after a deadly attack last year and as the Israel-Hamas war rages in Gaza.Authorities did not say how many pilgrims had arrived, but officers on Djerba said turnout by Friday morning was lower than usual.
Kabosu, the shiba inu dog whose quizzical expression starred in an array of "doge" internet memes, has died, its owner said Friday.
With a verdict in Donald Trump’s hush money trial set to come as soon as next week, President Joe Biden’s campaign is exploring a shift to a new, more aggressive posture, according to two people familiar with the strategy.
Hungary will seek to opt out of any NATO operations aimed at supporting Ukraine, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said Friday, suggesting that the military alliance and the European Union were moving toward a more direct conflict with Russia. Orbán told state radio that Hungary opposes a plan NATO is weighing to provide more predictable military support to Ukraine in coming years to repel Moscow's full-scale invasion, as better armed Russian troops assert control on the battlefield.
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden and his top advisers will be closely following developments from his son Hunter Biden’s criminal trial on felony gun charges in Delaware when it begins in early June, but for different reasons.
Asian and European stock markets fell Friday following Wall Street losses, as better-than-expected US data compounded worries the Federal Reserve will hold off on cutting interest rates this year."With earnings season largely behind us, we will now see markets following the economic data more closely, and unfortunately we look set for a protracted period of high rates if recent inflation data is anything to go by," said Scope Markets analyst Joshua Mahony.
China’s military drills around Taiwan are designed to test its ability to “seize power” over the island, the People’s Liberation Army said Friday as its forces kicked off a second day of large-scale exercises encircling its democratic neighbor.
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