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Excerpt from www.foxnews.com

A bill increasing penalties for falsely reporting a crime to law enforcement is heading to Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey’s desk.

Lawmakers in the Yellowhammer State passed the bill on Wednesday with a 32-0 vote in the Senate.

Many in the state called for harsher penalties for making a false police report after Carlee Russell faked her own kidnapping off Interstate 459 in the city of Hoover last summer – a case that drew national attention.

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Excerpt from www.theguardian.com

Two top Israeli officials criticised US president Joe Biden on Thursday for threatening to stop certain arms supplies to Israel if it invades Rafah, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).

“This is a difficult and very disappointing statement to hear from a president to whom we have been grateful since the beginning of the war,” Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, said on public radio in Israel’s first reaction to Biden’s warning.

Israel has defied international objections by sending in tanks and conducting “targeted raids” in the eastern areas of Rafah. It says Rafah is home to Hamas’s last remaining battalions but the city on the border with Egypt is also crammed with displaced Palestinian civilians.

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Excerpt from www.bbc.com

The incident comes after Israel targeted another of the broadcaster’s offices in Jerusalem on Sunday.

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Excerpt from www.nytimes.com

Tens of thousands of people have fled since an Israeli call this week to evacuate part of the southern Gazan city of Rafah, the United Nations said on Thursday, as Israeli airstrikes intensify and fears grow that an incursion by Israeli ground forces to take over a border crossing could lead to a full-scale invasion.

The mass flight from the east of the city, a major hub for people displaced from their homes along Gaza’s border with Egypt, is just the latest time that people have been forced to flee since Israel launched a war to dismantle Hamas, the armed group that led the deadly attack on Israel on Oct. 7.

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Excerpt from abcnews.go.com

SKOPJE, North Macedonia — The head of a center-right 22-party coalition that emerged victorious in North Macedonia’s parliamentary election has fallen just short of gaining a parliamentary majority, leaving it reliant on entering a partnership with another party to form a government.

The “Your Macedonia” coalition, led by the head of the VMRO-DPMNE party, Hristijan Mickoski, won just over 43% of the votes in Wednesday’s election, giving it 58 of the country’s 120 parliamentary seats, three fewer than an outright majority, official results showed. Mickoski was expected to begin seeking a governing partner as early as Thursday.

“Tonight we have a reason to celebrate, but starting from tomorrow, we have a job to do,” Mickoski, 46, said late Wednesday. “I’ll hold the first meeting in the morning where we will determine the principles for the composition of a government from which we will not deviate.”

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Excerpt from www.army-technology.com

As international tension reaches boiling point over Israel’s decision to go ahead with its offensive in Rafah, investigations have found that a specialist Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) unit has spent months targeting civilian housing across Gaza.

The 8219 Commando, an IDF combat engineering battalion, has demolished scores of housing, mosques and tunnels in the Palestinian territory, according to a recent report by Bellingcat.

Estimations show roughly 50% of Gaza’s buildings have been destroyed or damaged since Hamas’ 7 October attack and Israel’s subsequent bombardment. This includes more than 70,000 housing units, a key driver behind the displacement of 1.7 million Gazans.

IDF systematic attacks on civilian housing and infrastructure in Gaza are part of Israel’s controversial ‘buffer zone’ strategy: a 1km-wide ‘security belt’ of uninhabited land along the Israel-Palestine border.

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Excerpt from japantoday.com

The Japanese Defense Ministry is examining a video that purports to show a Maritime Self-Defense Force vessel in port, suspecting it may have been taken by an unauthorized drone, sources familiar with the matter said Wednesday.

The video, which was posted on a Chinese social media platform, stirred controversy earlier this year as it appears to provide a clear shot from above of the deck of the helicopter carrier Izumo. Defense Minister Minoru Kihara told reporters last month the ministry would investigate whether the imagery was fabricated or authentic.

According to the sources, the ensuing analysis led the ministry to believe the video was possibly taken from a drone that flew without permission above the vessel while it was anchored at an MSDF base in Yokosuka, south of Tokyo.

The video also showed what is believed to be buildings and facilities of the port in the city of Kanagawa Prefecture, which also hosts a U.S. naval base.

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Excerpt from www.cbsnews.com

Port Sudan, Sudan — A series of attacks by Sudanese paramilitary forces in the western region of Darfur raise the possibility of “genocide” against non-Arab ethnic communities, Human Rights Watch said Thursday. The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), along with allied militias, have been widely accused of ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity and war crimes in their war with Sudan’s regular army, which began in April 2023.

The war has killed tens of thousands of people, including up to 15,000 in the West Darfur town of El-Geneina, according to United Nations experts. The area is the focus of the 186-page HRW report “‘The Massalit Will Not Come Home’: Ethnic Cleansing and Crimes Against Humanity in El-Geneina, West Darfur, Sudan.”

It describes “an ethnic cleansing campaign against the ethnic Massalit and other non-Arab populations.”

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Excerpt from www.chicagotribune.com

 

NEW YORK — Stormy Daniels will return to the witness stand Thursday in Donald Trump’s hush money trial as the defense tries to undermine the credibility of the porn actor’s salacious testimony about their alleged sexual encounter and the money she was paid to keep quiet.

The trial against the former president kicks back off with defense lawyers questioning Daniels, whose account is key to the prosecutors’ case accusing Trump of scheming to illegally influence the 2016 presidential campaign by suppressing unflattering stories about him.

Trump looked on in the courtroom as Daniels for hours on Tuesday described an unexpected sexual encounter she says they had in 2006. Trump denies they ever had sex. Still, a decade later, Trump’s then-lawyer, Michael Cohen, paid her to stay silent in the final weeks of the presidential campaign.

Daniels’ testimony was an extraordinary moment in what could be the only criminal case against the presumptive Republican presidential nominee to go to trial before voters decide in November whether to send him back to the White House. Trump has pleaded not guilty, denies any wrongdoing and has cast himself as the victim of a politically tainted justice system working to deny him another term.

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Excerpt from www.usacarry.com

BATON ROUGE, LA – A controversial bill that sought to restrict concealed carry of firearms within 100 feet of parade routes in Louisiana failed to pass in the Louisiana House on Monday, May 6. House Bill 627, introduced by Representative Mandie Landry, did not garner enough support, with 58 representatives voting against it and only 38 in favor.

The bill aimed to amend existing laws to prohibit the carrying of concealed handguns in the vicinity of parades or demonstrations that had obtained a governmental permit. This proposed amendment was part of an effort to enhance public safety at large public gatherings, which often see significant crowds.

HB 627 would have infringed on the rights of law-abiding citizens to protect themselves and their families, especially in places where the likelihood of encountering a threat could be higher due to large gatherings. The legislation would have done little to prevent criminals, who do not adhere to gun laws, from carrying firearms.

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Excerpt from en.inform.kz

 Scientists detected ten powerful solar flares that erupted from the Sun over the past day, the Institute of Applied Geophysics has told TASS.

The first flare, ranked as category M1.3 flare, was detected at 12:48 a.m. Moscow time on Tuesday (9:48 p.m. Monday GMT), lasting 30 minutes. The last one, which occurred at 7:30 p.m. Moscow time (4:30 p.m. GMT), was also the most powerful of them all. Ranked as category M8.2, the flare continued for 15 minutes.

Some of those flares disrupted radio communications on the short wave.

Over the past few weeks, scientists have registered four solar flares of the highest X class (X1.7, X4.5 and two X1.3) and a large number of less powerful M-class flares.

Solar flares are divided into five classes according to their X-ray strength: the smallest ones are A-class, followed by B, C, M and X. A0.0 class is equal to the radiation energy found in the Earth’s orbit, 10 nanowatts per square meter. Each letter stands for a 10-fold increase in energy output. As a rule, the flares, known as giant explosions on the sun, send solar plasma into space, and the clouds of these charged particles can bring about geomagnetic storms when reaching the Earth.