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KERRVILLE, Texas (Gray News/AP) – Volunteer firefighters from Acuña, Mexico, are helping rescue and recover teams in Texas after flash floods killed more than 80 people over the Fourth of July holiday weekend and left others still missing.

According to a protective services government agency in Mexico, the Civil Protection Water Rescue Team and Cure Firefighters teamed up with the nonprofit organization Foundation 911 to assist in search efforts in Kerrville, Texas.

• Investigators say Starovoit likely took his own life
  

• Starovoit had held transport brief for barely a year
• He previously ran the Kursk region next to Ukraine
• His successor there was embroiled in a corruption case
• Ukrainian troops seized part of Kursk for months

July 7 (Reuters) - Russia's sacked transport minister has been found dead in his car outside Moscow with a gunshot wound and the principal hypothesis is that he took his own life, state investigators said on Monday, hours after President Vladimir Putin fired him.

A presidential decree published earlier on Monday gave no reason for the dismissal of Roman Starovoit, 53, after barely a year in the job, though political analysts were quick to raise the possibility that he may have been dismissed in connection with an investigation into corruption in the region he once ran.

Reuters could not independently confirm these suggestions, though a transport industry source, who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter, said Starovoit's position had been in question for months due to questions about the same corruption scandal.

That investigation centres on whether 19.4 billion roubles ($246 million) earmarked in 2022 for fortifying Russia's border with Ukraine in the Kursk region was properly spent or whether some of that money was embezzled.

Russia's Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes, said in a statement it was working to establish the precise circumstances of Starovoit's death.

A pistol belonging to Starovoit, who was divorced with two daughters, had been found near his body, various Russian media outlets cited law enforcement sources as saying.

Some Russian media, citing law enforcement sources, also said his body had been found with a gunshot wound to the head in bushes near his car, a Tesla, rather than in the car itself.

The vehicle was left near a park not far from his home in the Moscow region.

Before being appointed transport minister in May 2024, Starovoit had been governor of the Kursk region for nearly five years.

Vladimir Putin’s government has launched an aggressive campaign to nationalize the assets of Konstantin Strukov, one of Russia’s richest men and the owner of the country’s largest gold mining company. The move marks a sharp escalation in the Kremlin’s efforts to extract wealth from within its own elite as the financial toll of the war in Ukraine deepens.

Strukov, whose fortune is estimated at over $3.5 billion, is the founder of Yuzhuralzoloto—a gold empire built over decades with strong ties to the Kremlin. But on July 5, his private jet was grounded by Russian authorities as it prepared to leave for Turkey. His passport was reportedly seized, and the aircraft barred from departing.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/32827367

Jeremy Scahill
July 7, 2025

"The Israeli delegation that arrived in Doha Sunday has not been empowered to make any decisions. Netanyahu’s lead negotiator, Ron Dermer, is not in Qatar, and instead the team is headed by the deputy head of the Shin Bet intelligence service. The Israeli side, according to the Hamas official, appears to have come to Doha with a limited mission of reiterating Israel’s demand that Hamas accept Tel Aviv’s terms for a temporary truce."

The police officer who killed Indigenous teenager Kumanjayi Walker in 2019 was "racist" and had an "attraction" to adrenaline-style policing, a coroner's inquest has found.

Walker, 19, died shortly after he was shot three times at close range by Constable Zachary Rolfe during a home arrest in Yuendumu, a remote Indigenous community in the Northern Territory (NT).

Rolfe - no longer a policeman - was charged with Walker's murder and acquitted in 2022, sparking protests about Indigenous deaths in custody.

In delivering her findings, Judge Elisabeth Armitage said Walker's death was "avoidable" and there was "clear evidence of entrenched, systemic and structural racism" within NT's police force.

"In one of the houses that we had been in, we had the big territory. This was the closest to the citizens' neighbourhood, with people inside. And there's an imaginary line that they tell us all the Gazan people know it, and that they know they are not allowed to pass it," he said. "But how can they know?"

People who crossed into this area were most often shot, he said. "It was like pretty much everyone that comes into the territory, and it might be like a teenager riding his bicycle," he said.

The soldier described a prevailing belief among troops that all Gazans were terrorists, even when they were clearly unarmed civilians. This perception, he said, was not challenged and was often endorsed by commanders.

A unusual attack by bees in the French town of Aurillac has left 24 people injured, including three in critical condition, according to local authorities.

The Prefecture of Cantal, in south-central France, said passersby were stung over a period of about 30 minutes on Sunday morning. Firefighters and medical teams were rushed to the scene to treat the victims while police set up a security perimeter until the bees stopped their attack.

The three people in critical condition were evacuated to a local hospital.

Pierre Mathonier, the mayor of Aurillac, told French broadcaster France 3 the incident may have been related to Asian hornets threatening beehives that had been installed on the roof terrace of a downtown hotel over 10 years ago. He said that this had likely caused the bees to become aggressive.

Across the English Channel, the U.K.'s white cliffs beckon. On fine days, men and women with children in their arms and determination in their eyes can see the shoreline of what they believe will be a promised land as they attempt the perilous crossing clandestinely, ditching belongings to squeeze aboard flimsy inflatable boats that set to sea from northern France.

In a flash, on one recent crossing attempt, French police swooped in with knives, wading into the water and slashing the boat’s thin rubber — literally deflating the migrants’ hopes and dreams.

Some of the men put up dispirited resistance, trying to position themselves — in vain — between the boat and the officers’ blades. One splashed water at them, another hurled a shoe. Cries of “No! No!” rang out. A woman wailed.

A few excerpts:

That night, the settlers moved from home to home forcing families out at gun point.

Resident Aliya Mlihat immediately rang the police, who were slow to respond. When border police and three military jeeps arrived on the scene, they did nothing to stop the onslaught, even facilitating the raids on people's homes.

Mlihat recalled that "the expressions on the soldiers' faces revealed satisfaction - even joy - as if they were endorsing the settlers' actions".

In one photo taken by Mlihat, settlers can be seen lounging in chairs and grinning alongside soldiers in fatigues.

The attack was led by sanctioned Israeli settler Zohar Sabah, who had set up the new outpost. According to Mlihat, Sabah stormed the area armed with an M16 rifle, shouting at residents to "flee to Jordan".

Israeli rights group Stop the Wall reported that settlers pitched a tent in the middle of the village, hooking it up to running water from a nearby outpost. They then proceeded to expand the outpost, forcing the 125 residents to flee to the industrial zone of Beitunia, where they do not have access to water or electricity.

"It involves just a couple of people setting up an outpost, herding their own flocks on the community's traditional grazing land, taking over access to water resources, stealing sheep, intimidating the community and preventing them from having access to all the natural resources around them.

"And then we'll see this escalation of violent attacks, often at night. This is what we're seeing now, just copy-paste, replicated all across the area east of Ramallah."

"It means that the two-state solution that the international community purports to support will no longer be viable, or is not viable if there's no Palestinian presence in large parts of the West Bank."

Low emphasised that despite frequent visits by diplomats to imperilled Palestinian villages in the West Bank, the international community is doing little to prevent their displacement.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/32817999

from 972 Magazine Sunday Recap newsletter [published in Israel] 07/06/2025

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• ‘It comes with the territory’: How Israel’s archaeologists legitimize annexation

BRICS leaders are meeting in Brazil for a two-day summit, as Donald Trump vows an extra 10% tariff against countries "aligning" with the bloc.

Leaders of the growing BRICS group of developing nations met in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday, reaffirming the bloc's commitment to multilateral diplomacy.

In his opening remarks, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said, "We are witnessing the unparalleled collapse of multilateralism."

"If international governance does not reflect the new multipolar reality of the 21st century, it is up to BRICS to help bring it up to date," he said.

He also criticized the NATO military alliance, accusing it of fueling a global arms race after it set a defense spending target of 5% of GDP late last month.