MOSCOW, June 30. /TASS/: Helsinki has been mindlessly parroting NATO policy views ever since it joined the North Atlantic Alliance in April, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a comment on Friday.

WELLINGTON, Jun 30 (NNN-XINHUA) – New Zealand’s major supermarkets have been preparing for the second phase of the national plastics ban, starting from tomorrow, which will see the phase-out of more single-use plastics.

The second round will ban plastic produce bags and stickers, plates, bowls, cutlery, and straws, according to the Ministry for Environment’s website, released today.

Those plastics will be taken off the shelves from tomorrow, with businesses to be possibly fined up to 100,000 NZ dollars (60,853 U.S. dollars) if they do not comply.

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — Cambodia’s long-serving, tough-talking leader, Hun Sen, on Friday said he is considering banning Facebook in his country, largely because he is fed up with the abuse he receives on it from his political enemies abroad.

KYIV, June 30 (Reuters) - President Volodymyr Zelenskiy ordered top military commanders on Friday to strengthen Ukraine's northern military sector following the arrival of Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin in Belarus.

He said Ukrainian intelligence and security forces had reported on the situation in Belarus, Ukraine's northern neighbour, at a meeting of top military and political leaders.

UNITED NATIONS, June 30 (Reuters) - The United Nations Security Council on Friday unanimously voted to end a decade-long peacekeeping mission in Mali after the West African country's military junta abruptly asked the 13,000-strong force to leave - a move the United States said was engineered by Russia's Wagner mercenary group.

RAWALPINDI, Jun 30 (APP): The security forces on Friday killed six active terrorists involved in various hostile and terror activities against the forces and innocent civilians amid successful operations in Tank and North Waziristan districts.

According to the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), an exchange of fire took place between the army troops and terrorists in the general area of Manzai, Tank District on the night of June 29-30.

The troops effectively engaged the terrorists’ location and resultantly, three of them were sent to hell.

MOSCOW, June 30. /TASS/: Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi discussed their countries’ cooperation within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (CSO) and the Group of Twenty, the Kremlin press service said on Friday after their telephone call.

"Special attention was focused on cooperation within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the Group of Twenty, where India now holds the presidency, as well as within the BRICS format," it said.

ISLAMABAD (AP) — The International Monetary Fund has agreed to provide $3 billion to Pakistan in badly needed relief to help bail out the impoverished country’s ailing economy.

The nine-month agreement must be approved by the IMF’s Executive Board, which is expected to make a final decision in mid-July, a top IMF official, Nathan Porter, said in a statement late Thursday.

GENEVA, June 30 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Some 64 flights were cancelled at Geneva’s international airport on Friday, it said, after operations were halted for four hours because of a strike by workers at the start of the busy summer travel season.

“Because of the social action… the direction decided a temporary halt of operations from 6:00 am to 10:00 am,” the airport said in a tweet early on Friday. “64 flights — arrivals and departures — cancelled.”

PARIS (AP) — French President Emmanuel Macron urged parents Friday to keep teenagers at home and proposed restrictions on social media to quell rioting spreading across France over the fatal police shooting of a 17-year-old driver that has resulted so far in the arrests of 875 people.

After a second crisis meeting with senior ministers, Macron maintained that social media platforms such as Snapchat and TikTok played a “considerable role” in fueling copycat acts of violence during this week’s unrest.

ST. PETERSBURG, June 30 (Xinhua) -- Russia's airlines carried 78,800 passengers to China in the first five months of 2023, which was almost 10 times the volume in the previous year, said Russia's Ministry of Transport on Friday.

During the same period last year, Russia's airlines transported 7,500 passengers to China. As the Ministry of Transport clarified, the growth was associated with the lifting of coronavirus restrictions in China and an increase in the number of flights.

SAO PAULO (AP) — A panel of judges voted Friday to render far-right former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro ineligible to run for office again after concluding that he abused his power and cast unfounded doubts on the country’s electronic voting system.

The decision, once all judges have voted, will forbid Bolsonaro from running until 2030, upending the 68-year-old’s political future and likely erasing any chance for him to regain power.