USA

June 25 (Reuters) - Law-enforcement officials and retailers are investigating a recent wave of bomb threats across the United States, targeting grocery operators and other stores, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.

Retail companies including Kroger (KR.N), Walmart (WMT.N) and Amazon's (AMZN.O) Whole Foods Market, among others, have received bomb threats at their stores in recent months, the report said, adding that some callers demanded gift cards, bitcoin or money and threatened to detonate bombs if payments were not made.

WASHINGTON, June 25 (Reuters) - The unprecedented challenge to Russian President Vladimir Putin by Wagner fighters has exposed fresh "cracks" in the strength of his leadership that may take weeks or months to play out, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Sunday.

Blinken and members of the U.S. Congress said in a series of television interviews that Saturday's turmoil in Russia has weakened Putin in ways that could aid Ukraine's counteroffensive against Russian forces within its territory while benefiting Russia's neighbors, including Poland and the Baltic states.

NEW YORK, June 25 (Reuters) - Conservative former U.S. appeals court judge J. Michael Luttig in an opinion piece on Sunday said Republicans are making a serious error with "spineless support" for Donald Trump's new bid for the White House.

June 25 (Reuters) - Hikers have found human remains in Southern California's Mount Baldy wilderness, the mountainous area where British-born film actor Julian Sands went missing in January, local authorities said late on Saturday.

The hikers contacted Fontana Station officials at about 10 a.m. on Saturday to report the discovery of the body, which was taken to the coroner's office for identification, the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department said in a statement.

(AP) --- The U.S. Navy said Sunday that it won’t be using a large piece of salvage equipment that it had deployed to the effort to retrieve the Titan submersible.

The Flyaway Deep Ocean Salvage System had the capability of lifting an intact Titan back to the surface. The U.S. Coast Guard announced on Thursday that debris from the submersible had been found roughly 1,600 feet (488 meters) from the Titanic in North Atlantic waters.

NEW YORK (AP) — Salman Rushdie, Cheryl Strayed, Carl Hiassen and Ibram X. Kendi are among hundreds of authors who have endorsed an announcement by the American Library Association and the Association of American Publishers that calls attention to the 70th anniversary of a Freedom to Read Statement issued by book publishers and librarians during the height of the McCarthy era.

SAGINAW, Mich. (AP) — A 51-year-old woman and a 19-year-old man were slain and a dozen others wounded during a shooting at a large street party in Michigan that was promoted on social media.

The shooting occurred around midnight Saturday in Saginaw, about 102 miles (164 kilometers) northwest of Detroit, state police said.

Police initially said about 200 people were in the area of the party and that officers had been dispersing the crowd prior to the shooting, MLive.com reported.

22 June 2023; MEMO: A US army veteran has been sentenced to 55 years in prison for the murder of an Afghan refugee after he shouted Islamophobic slurs at the victim, Anadolu Agency reports.

After a three-day trial, Dustin Passarelli was convicted in the Mid-western US state of Indiana of the murder of Mustafa Ayoubi, 32, with additional time for using a firearm.

23 June 2023; MEMO: The United Nations Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, has condemned the Israeli settlers' attacks on Palestinian property, describing them as "acts of terrorism".

In a statement issued by his office, Guterres said the settlers' terrorist acts included "acts of sabotage and arson of land, property and schools in Palestinian villages around Nablus and Ramallah."

WASHINGTON, June 24 (NNN-PRENSA LATINA) — Over the past two decades, global reservoirs have become increasingly empty despite an overall increase in total storage capacity due to the construction of new reservoirs, according to a new study published by Nature Communications.    

Using satellite data from over 7,000 global reservoirs, Texas A&M researchers found that while total storage capacity has increased, the filling rate is lower than expected.