At least four rockets were fired into Israel from the Gaza Strip just after midnight on Saturday, the Israeli military said, as President Joe Biden remains in the region.The Israeli Defense Forces confirmed the rocket attack in a series of tweets, including a video showing the moment the IDF missile defense system shot one rocket out of the air.”Sirens sounding in southern Israel,” read an initial tweet. In a follow-up tweet, the IDF said it responded to the rocket attack by targeting a Hamas rocket production site.BIDEN MEETS WITH SAUDI ARABIA’S PRINCE MOHAMMED BIN SALMAN, TALKING ‘ENERGY SECURITY'”In response to…

The U.S. says Russian officials visited an Iranian airfield multiple times in recent weeks to view attack-capable drones it is looking to obtain for its attack against Ukraine.Iran showed the drones to Russian officials at Kashan Airfield on June 8 and July 15, the White House said. The Biden administration has published satellite imagery showing Shahed-191 and Shahed-129 drones flying at the airfield at the same time a Russian delegation transport plane was on the ground.White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan announced the administration’s findings.The administration has “information that the Iranian government is preparing to provide Russia with several…

President Biden reaffirmed the U.S. partnership and commitment to work with the Middle East as Saudi Arabia announces it will increase its oil production. “The U.S. is going to remain an active partner in the Middle East as the world grows more competitive,” Biden told reporters on Saturday in Jeddah. “It’s only becoming clearer to me how closely woven America’s interests are with successes in the Middle East. We will not walk away to leave a vacuum to be filled by China, Russia or Iran.”He added, “We will seek to build on this moment with active, principled, American leadership.”Biden’s comments follow…

After the report came out, the mayor of Uvalde, Don McLaughlin, said the acting chief during the shooting, Lt. Mariano Pargas, had been placed on administrative leave and that the city had begun its own internal investigation. The city released body camera footage documenting the actions of the Uvalde officers at the scene.The facts laid out in the report also made clear that neither existing gun laws, nor expanded background checks passed by Congress in response to the shooting, would have prevented the gunman, Salvador Ramos, from obtaining the weapon he used.Though referred to by some peers as a “school…

The United Nations Security Council on Friday voted unanimously to extend its U.N. Integrated Office in Haiti for another year but did not back a China-led provision to include some bans on transfers of small arms and light weapons. The motion presents another instance of China attempting to increase its involvement on the island. Violence erupted across Haiti following last year’s assassination of President Jovenel Moise. Authorities have failed to identify and arrest those involved in planning and financing the assassination while gangs moved to aggressively expand their territory during the period of absent leadership. The U.N.’s mandate will remain in effect until…

LONDON — The prospect of record-breaking temperatures in Britain might have been expected to raise the heat on leading politicians over the ambition of their climate protection plans.Instead, with a ferocious battle underway to succeed the prime minister, Boris Johnson, top contenders are talking less about global warming and more about how to blunt the impact of spiking energy bills on hard-pressed consumers.Scientists have found that some of the heat extremes around the world in recent years have been influenced by human-induced climate change.But the direction of the debate has so alarmed Alok Sharma, a cabinet minister who led last…

Wildfires raged in southwestern France, Spain, and Portugal on Saturday forcing thousands to evacuate from their homes as a persistent heat wave cut across Western Europe. On Saturday afternoon, 14,000 people had been evacuated from France’s Gironde region as more than 1,200 firefighters battled to bring the flames under control, regional authorities said in a statement.”We have a fire that will continue to spread as long as it is not stabilized,” Vincent Ferrier, deputy prefect for Langon in Gironde, said in a news conference.The ferocious flames ripped through the forest in the Bordeaux region of France for five continual days, while…

A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked the Biden administration from enforcing directives that extended civil rights protections to L.G.B.T.Q. students and workers.The ruling comes roughly one year after a group of 20 conservative state attorneys general filed a lawsuit against two federal agencies for their interpretation of the 1972 landmark civil rights statute known as Title IX, which prohibited sex-based discrimination in educational programs and activities that receive federal funding, and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited employers from discriminating against workers based on race, religion or sex.Last year, those agencies, the Department of…

A cargo plane operated by a Ukrainian carrier has crashed in Northern Greece, officials said.Greece’s Civil Aviation authorities said residents of Kavala, Greece heard loud explosions and saw a fireball in the sky after an Antonov cargo plane heading from Serbia to Jordan went down on Saturday.The Greek aviation authorities just before the crash they made contact with the pilot, who reported a problem in one of the plane’s engines and requested an emergency landing. Authorities instructed the pilot to land at either the Thessaloniki or Kavala airports.CARGO SHIP CARRYING 4,000 CARS SINKS IN ATLANTIC OCEANThe officials said the pilot…

BAGHDAD — In a pivotal scene of the 2021 documentary “Sabaya,” two men rescue a young woman named Leila from a Syrian detention camp for the families of ISIS fighters, bundling her into a car and driving her to safety as shots are fired behind them.In interviews with BBC Radio and others, the film’s Iraqi-Swedish director, Hogir Hirori, recounted the tension of the rescue and the terror of the ride as they raced from Al Hol detention camp with the young woman, one of thousands of women and girls from Iraq’s Yazidi religious minority who had been sexually enslaved by…