18 August 2023; MEMO: A suspicious envelope full of white powder was sent to a mosque in Sweden on Friday, police said, Anadolu Agency reports.

In a statement, police in the south-western city of Gothenburg said that an investigation was opened and the powder sent to the mosque in the region of Hisingen was being analysed.

20 August 2023; MEMO: Turkiye on Saturday “strongly” condemned the UN Peacekeeping force’s intervention in the construction of the Pile-Yigitler road in Northern Cyprus, reports Anadolu Agency.

19 August 2023; MEMO: At least 500 prisoners in Bahrain are undergoing a hunger strike in what is said to be the largest such demonstration within the Gulf state’s prison system, amid authorities’ ongoing detention of prisoners of conscience. 

According to The Guardian newspaper, detainees began refusing food on 7 August, with increasing numbers of prisoners having joined the hunger strike throughout the following weeks.

18 August 2023; MEMO: An Israeli who received a ten-year prison sentence in Turkiye for possession and attempted smuggling of illegal qat leaves will be released over the weekend, reported the Times of Israel.

Danny Aweke, 35, was arrested in 2019 on suspicion of smuggling qat leaves through Turkiye, where the substance is considered an illegal, and was later convicted and sentenced to ten years in prison.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — An officer responding to a domestic violence call fatally shot a man after the suspect stabbed another officer in the neck with a knife Sunday morning in Charlotte, North Carolina, authorities said.

The officers heard gunshots from inside the apartment just before 8 a.m. and forced their way inside, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Johnny Jennings said in a video statement posted to social media.

The two officers encountered a male suspect and began a struggle to take him into custody, Jennings said.

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia’s Luna-25 spacecraft crashed into the moon after it spun into an uncontrolled orbit, the country’s Roscosmos space agency said Sunday.

The pilotless spacecraft was aiming to be the first ever to land on the south pole of the moon, an area where scientists believe there could be important reserves of frozen water and precious elements. It had been expected to land Monday.

However, Roscosmos said it lost contact with the Luna-25 on Saturday after the spacecraft ran into difficulties and reported an “abnormal situation ”.

HOUSTON (AP) — Sylvia Ann Miller-Scarborough remembers when people of color had to pay a poll tax to vote in Houston. She recalls her grandmother, undeterred by such obstacles, reminding her how important it was to be heard at the ballot box.

Miller-Scarborough worries that much of the hard-won progress she’s seen in more than a half-century of voting in the largest county in Texas could be erased by Republican lawmakers. And she says it’s gotten harder to convince her own grandchildren that it matters.

WASHINGTON, Aug 20 (Reuters) - Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is asking a federal court to dismiss Georgia state criminal charges against him stemming from former President Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 U.S. presidential election, according to a court document.

Meadows claims that his alleged actions, including participating with Trump in a phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, should be immune from state prosecution because they were performed in his capacity as a federal official.

MOSCOW, Aug 20 (Reuters) - Russia's first moon mission in 47 years failed when its Luna-25 space craft spun out of control and crashed into the moon after a problem preparing for pre-landing orbit, underscoring the post-Soviet decline of a once mighty space programme.

Russia's state space corporation, Roskosmos, said it had lost contact with the craft at 11:57 GMT on Saturday after a problem as the craft was shunted into pre-landing orbit. A soft landing had been planned for Monday.

18 August 2023; MEMO: Egyptian political prisoner, Mahmoud Abdel-Raheem, has died in the Gamasa Prison in Damietta governorate, two months after both his daughter and wife were killed in a car accident while on their way to visit him in detention, a rights watchdog has said.

The Egyptian Network for Human Rights (ENHR) said Abdel-Raheem, a former employee at the Ministry of Religious Endowments, was sentenced to three years in prison.

CAIRO, Aug. 20 (Xinhua) -- Egypt on Sunday called for calm in Cyprus after the recent attacks on United Nations peacekeepers in the east Mediterranean island.

In a statement, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry called for efforts to stop measures that would fuel tensions between the two parts of Cyprus, underlining the importance of respecting the mandate of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) and the relevant UN Security Council resolutions.

NIAMEY, Niger (AP) — Mutinous soldiers in Niger are under pressure from regional sanctions as they refuse to reinstate the country’s president whom they toppled nearly a month ago while being fearful of attacks from France, an official said.

The official spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity after Saturday’s meeting between Niger’s new military regime and a delegation from the West African regional bloc, ECOWAS.