News In Brief

Regime bombings kill 14 civilians
in Syria
AFP, Beirut
Syrian regime bombardment has killed 14 civilians including seven children in northwestern Syria, a war monitor said Saturday, in the latest deadly raids on the embattled opposition bastion.
Warplanes and helicopters late Friday carried out air strikes on Mahambel village in Idlib province, killing 13 civilians including the seven children, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

IAEA to hold
special meeting on Iran on July 10
AFP, Vienna
The UN’s nuclear watchdog said Friday it will hold a special meeting on Iran’s nuclear programme next week, days after Tehran breached one of the limits set in a 2015 deal with world powers.
The meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)’s board of governors would be held “on 10 July at 14:30,” an IAEA spokesman said.

Strongest earthquake in 20 years rattles Southern California
Reuters, Los Angeles
A powerful magnitude 7.1 earthquake shook Southern California on Friday, causing some damage to buildings, with 11 times more force than an apparent foreshock that rattled the same area a day earlier.
The latest quake struck at about 8:20 p.m. local time (0320 GMT) near the town of Ridgecrest on the edge of Death Valley National Park, about 125 miles (202 km) northeast of Los Angeles, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). It was also measured at 7.1 by the European-Mediterranean Seismological Agency.

Russian official arrested on high treason charges
AP, Moscow
An aide to the presidential envoy to Russia’s Urals region has been arrested on charges of high treason, in the first publicly known case of a government official being arrested on suspicions of treason in post-Soviet Russia.
The aide, Alexander Vorobyov, told Moscow’s Lefortovsky District Court on Friday that he worked as an assistant to President Vladimir Putin’s envoy to the region, Nikolai Tsukanov. He was wearing a camouflaged ski mask while attending the court session.

14 killed as mortars hit Afghan market
AFP, Kabul
At least 14 people were killed and dozens more wounded when a busy market in northern Afghanistan was hit by mortar fire, officials said Saturday.
Several Taliban shells hit the market Friday morning in the Khwaja Sabz Posh district of Faryab province, according to Hanif Rezaee, an Afghan army spokesman. “Fourteen civilians were killed and 40 – including women and children -were wounded,” Rezaee told AFP. He said the Taliban had been trying to hit an army checkpoint near the market. The insurgent group did not immediately comment.