Page 16 - Cisc News Today

German police arrested seven people on Thursday on suspicion of founding a terrorist organization with the aim of carrying out high-profile attacks similar to Islamic State, prosecutors said.

As Wagner mercenaries advanced on Moscow in an attempted mutiny in late June, authorities in Syria and Russian military commanders there took a series of swift measures against local Wagner operatives to prevent the uprising spreading, according to six sources familiar with the matter.

The Iraqi government has opened an investigation into the kidnapping of Israeli citizen Elizabeth Tsurkov in Baghdad in March, a government spokesperson told Reuters on Friday.

NATO leaders will meet in Vilnius on July 11-12 to tackle a wide range of topics, from divisions over Ukraine's membership bid and Sweden's accession to boosting ammunitions stockpiles and reviewing the first defence plans in decades.

Ukraine's counter-offensive against Russian forces is going more slowly than some expected but it remains too early to draw conclusions about Kyiv's prospects for battlefield gains, a senior Pentagon official said on Friday.

U.S. President Joe Biden and Turkey's President Tayyip Erdogan may meet during next week's NATO summit in Lithuania, sources briefed on the planning said.

The United States plans to send cluster munitions to Ukraine to help it battle Russian invaders, U.S. officials said on Thursday, a move opposed by human rights groups but which would provide a powerful new element to Ukraine's counteroffensive.

OPEC will likely maintain an upbeat view on oil demand growth for next year when it publishes its first outlook later this month, predicting a slowdown from this year but still an above-average increase, sources close to OPEC said.

Canada, Sweden, Ukraine and Britain have asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to open proceedings against Iran over the shooting down of a Ukrainian passenger plane in 2020 that killed all 176 people on board, legal filings showed on Wednesday.

Russia accused a small U.S.-based charity on Wednesday of "sabotaging" the construction of a huge gas pipeline to China and banned it as an "undesirable organisation".