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Paris Olympics boldly declared that France's capital would be " the safest place in the world " when the Games open this Friday. Tony Estanguet's confident forecast looks less far-fetched now with squadrons of police patrolling Paris' streets, fighter jets and soldiers primed to scramble, and imposing metal-fence security barriers erected like an iron curtain on both sides of the River Seine that will star in the opening show. France's vast police and military operation is in large part because the July 26-Aug. 11 Games face unprecedented security challenges. The city has repeatedly suffered deadly extremist attacks and international tensions are high because of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. Rather than build an Olympic park with venues grouped together outside of the city center, like Rio de Janeiro in 2016 or London in 2012, Paris has chosen to host many of the events in the heart of the bustling capital of 2 million inhabitants, with others dotted around suburbs that house millions more. Putting temporary sports arenas in public spaces and the unprecedented choice to stage a river-borne opening ceremony stretching for kilometers (miles) along the Seine, makes safeguarding them more complex.

The nationwide demonstrations — called for mainly by student groups — began weeks ago to protest a quota system that reserves up to 30% of government jobs for relatives of veterans who fought in Bangladesh's war of independence in 1971. Violence erupted Tuesday, with the Daily Prothom Alo newspaper on Saturday reporting the death of at least 103 people so far. Bangladeshi authorities haven't shared any official numbers of those killed and injured.

Houthi targets in western Yemen following a fatal drone attack by the rebel group in Tel Aviv the previous day. The Israeli strikes appeared to be the first on Yemeni soil since the Israel-Hamas war began in October, and they threatened to open a new front in the region as Israel battles proxies of Iran. A number of «military targets» were hit in the western port city of Hodeidah, a Houthi stronghold, the Israeli army said, adding that its attack was «in response to the hundreds of attacks carried out against the state of Israel in recent months.»

China's challenge to American primacy, it's believed, will be the defining contest of the century. While this may be true, a far more dangerous contest is afoot between what seems to be a crumbling old order (US-led West) and a rivalrous new Axis that is struggling to be born — China-Russia-Iran-North Korea (CRIK). Award winning journalist John Pilger tells us that Mao in 1944 had made an appeal to Washington, «China must industrialise, this can only be done by Free Enterprise. Chinese and American interests fit together, economically and politically. We cannot risk crossing America; we cannot risk any conflict». He received no reply. Mao's successors decided to join the system and beat the US at its own game — capitalism & innovation — and are now with its bete noire Russia challenging the American-led order. Iran and North Korea have strengthened this New Axis. The evolving powerplay has created the precise construct that Henry Kissinger had once warned: a Bear-Dragon tandem that is in delightful synchrony. The New Axis has not only performed well in the Ukrainian and West Asian theatres of war, but is also looking towards the Global South (125 countries, 80% of the global population, 40% of global GDP) as its wider field of play.

Rio de Janeiro next week, following two years of geopolitical disputes that overshadowed their work and raised questions about the very purpose of the G-20. Geopolitical clashes, particularly the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, will be addressed in a separate chair statement published by the host nation together with the communique, according to ambassador Mauricio Carvalho Lyrio, the secretary for economic and financial affairs at Brazil's foreign ministry. «We need to resume the production of documents by the G-20,» he told reporters in Brasilia on Friday. «We will no longer demand the inclusion of language about geopolitics in ministerial documents.» Deep disagreements over the wars prevented G-20 finance chiefs from issuing a communique in February, when they met in Sao Paulo under Brazil's rotating presidency of the group. The same happened in India last year and in Indonesia in 2022. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's presidency of the G-20 is facing steep challenges in a tumultuous international climate dominated by contentious elections and the wars. Still, Brazilian authorities say discussions around his main proposals are making progress. The leftist leader has been pushing for the creation of a global minimum tax on billionaires to fund actions against climate change and programmes to eliminate world hunger.

Israeli forces pounded several areas across the Gaza Strip on Saturday, killing at least 30 Palestinians, according to health officials, as tanks advanced deeper into western and northern Rafah. Among those killed on Saturday were local journalist Mohammad Abu Jasser, his wife, and two children, in an Israeli strike on their house in the northern Gaza Strip, a medic said. Gaza's Hamas-run government media office said Abu Jasser's death raised to 161 the number of Palestinian media personnel killed by Israeli fire since October 7.

Donald Trump said Friday he had spoken by telephone with Ukraine leader Volodymyr Zelensky, and pledged to end the European country's war with Russia. «I appreciate President Zelensky for reaching out because I, as your next President of the United States, will bring peace to the world and end the war that has cost so many lives and devastated countless innocent families,» Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform. «Both sides will be able to come together and negotiate a deal that ends the violence and paves a path forward to prosperity.»

Russia and find him sitting with a submachine gun in his office. Russian President Vladimir Putin's internal security force, the National Guard, has recommended in its draft proposal that the top managers at Russia's Central Bank should carry submachine guns, reports 'Newsweek'. The proposal has been made at a time when Russia is going through an economic crises due to Ukraine War. The National Guard or Rosogvardiya is responsible for the protection of state buildings and domestic security. It is under the direct control of the Russian president.

Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War returns with its third season in October 2024. The announcement came at Anime Expo, featuring a new poster and trailer. The anime adapts the final chapters of the Bleach manga. Release Window At Anime Expo, the release window for Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War Part 3 was announced. A new poster and trailer accompanied the announcement. The anime adapts the final story arc of the Bleach manga, left unfinished after the original series ended in 2012. The third part, titled «The Conflict,» focuses on the ongoing battle between the Soul Reapers and the Quincy. The series will conclude with its fourth season, adapting the last seventy-seven chapters of the manga.

protests by thousands of students in Bangladesh against quotas in government jobs has brought focus to a history of violence in a country born out of a war between India and Pakistan in 1971 in which nearly 3 million people were killed. Its founding father and first prime minister Sheikh Mujibur Rehman was assassinated in 1975 in a military coup which brought in a long period of military rule. Though democracy was restored slowly by 1990, the country of nearly 170 million people has been rocked by sporadic periods of sectarian or political violence in recent years.

Microsoft outage hit millions of internet users and almost all operations leading to digital payment, airlines, banks, stock markets and many more services came to an end, the question looming large at the world is whether this was predicted earlier. Has Brazilian fortune teller Athos Salome predicted the present internet outage? The astronomer, dubbed the living Nostradamus predicted «three days of darkness» in 2024. Did he mean this outage? The same person has also predicted the beginning of World War 3 this year. So what next?

drone strikes by Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin has fortified the defenses surrounding his palace in Valdai, located north of Moscow. Satellite images captured on May 6 reveal at least seven medium-range air defense systems deployed near the extensive forest estate on Lake Valdai's shores, as reported by the US-based think tank, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW). Prioritizing High-Value Targets According to The Telegraph, the ISW stated, «Ukraine's relentless drone strikes have compelled Moscow's military command to prioritize limited air defense assets to cover what it deems high-value targets.» The satellite images also show Pantsir-S1 air defense units, surface-to-air missiles, and a long-range radar station, operational since the spring when Ukraine intensified attacks on Russian infrastructure.

HAIFA, Israel—Above ground, Rambam Health Care Campus treats the wounded from the fight in Gaza. Below ground, northern Israel’s leading hospital is preparing for what could be the country’s next war—an all-out conflict with Hezbollah. Four operating rooms, a maternity ward and a dialysis center are among the facilities the hospital has set up three levels down in its underground parking garage, part of its plan to keep functioning if the daily tit for tat exchange of fire between Israel and the U.S.-designated terror group across the border with Lebanon escalates.

The assassination attempt on Donald Trump stunned the U.S. and has opened debate about dysfunctions in America’s political culture. Troubling too should be the reality that America isn’t alone.

US President Joe Biden is still expected to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he visits Washington next week but it will depend on his recovery from Covid, the White House said Thursday. «We have every expectation that the two leaders will have a chance to see each other while Prime Minister Netanyahu is in town,» National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters in a briefing. Netanyahu is set to address the US Congress on Wednesday and Israeli media had reported a meeting with Biden on Monday, but Kirby said, «I can't tell you at this point what that exactly is going to look like.»

Air India plane flying from Delhi to San Francisco made a precautionary landing in the Russian region of Siberia after crew detected a potential issue in the cargo hold area, the Indian airline said on Friday. It was the second time in a little over a year that an Air India flight on the same route had made an unscheduled landing in Russia. Many carriers, including U.S. and European Union airlines, do not fly over Russian airspace following the war in Ukraine, but Air India does, giving it a flying time and cost advantage on U.S. routes.

Mint explains: Byju Raveendran, the maverick founder who held a tight grip on Byju’s, will lose control of the firm to an interim resolution professional (IRP). The IRP will begin the process of forming a committee of Byju’s financial creditors, and subsequently hand over control to them. Raveendran now stares at a tight deadline to settle with the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), India’s powerful cricket board, out of court.

Mata Hari of her kind, but different in many other ways too. Sue Mi Terry, a native of Seoul South Korea, who now lives in Manhattan, used her position as a respected foreign policy expert and extracted or stole vital information. She spent more than a decade working as a secret South Korean agent and stole many information on many projects. But contrary to Mata Hari, the German spy during World War I, Sue Mi Terry, received luxury handbags, designer duds and meals at Michelin-starred restaurants.

Benjamin Netanyahu made a surprise visit to troops in southern Gaza on Thursday, his office said, just days before he was set to give a speech to the US Congress. Netanyahu's visit to the southern city of Rafah was announced hours after Israel's far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, visited Jerusalem's most sensitive holy site. Ben Gvir's move could disrupt sensitive talks aimed at reaching a cease-fire in the 9-month-old Israel-Hamas war. Ben-Gvir, an ultranationalist settler leader, said he went up to the flashpoint site to pray for the return of Israeli hostages «but without a reckless deal, without surrendering.» Israeli negotiators landed in Cairo on Wednesday to keep working on the talks. Tensions over the compound have fuelled past rounds of violence. The Palestinian Foreign Ministry condemned Ben-Gvir's visit as a «provocative intrusion» that endangered the fragile status quo regarding the Jerusalem compound, which is revered by Jews as the Temple Mount and by Muslims as Haram al-Sharif, a holy site and important national symbol.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s high-profile visit to Moscow last week set off a firestorm of criticism in the West. But if you look beyond the hyperbole used to describe India-Russia relations, it becomes obvious that there’s less to the connection than meets the eye. As a weakened Russia grows more dependent on China, India has no choice but to draw closer to the U.S.

Lawmakers at the European Parliament have re-elected Ursula von der Leyen to a second 5-year term as president of the European Union’s executive commission