LE PECQ, France (AP) — The attacker slashed at the 24-year-old Catholic pilgrim with the knife that he used to savagely stab one young child after another. But rather than run, Henri held his ground — using a weighty backpack he was carrying to swing at the assailant and fend off his blade.

French media hailed Henri as “the hero with a backpack” Friday after he was shown in a video grappling with the assailant and charging after him during the knife attack that critically wounded four children between the ages of 22 months and 3 years old, and also injured two adults.

BEIRUT (AP) — A little white pill has given Syrian President Bashar Assad powerful leverage with his Arab neighbors, who have been willing to bring him out of pariah status in hopes he will stop the flow of highly addictive Captagon amphetamines out of Syria.

Western governments have been frustrated by the red-carpet treatment Arab countries have given Assad, fearing that their reconciliation will undermine the push for an end to Syria’s long-running civil war.

NEW YORK, June 9 (Xinhua) -- Guns are the leading cause of death for children and teens in the United States, and simply being exposed to gun violence at an early age causes significant harm to children's mental health, reported Newsweek on Thursday.

Around 9 million children per year were exposed to gun violence prior to the pandemic and Black children had a 4.44 times higher exposure rate than white children. This disparity has only gotten worse, according to the report.

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday that Moscow will deploy some of its tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus next month, a move that the Belarusian opposition described as an attempt to blackmail the West.

Putin said during a meeting with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko that work on building facilities for the nuclear weapons will be completed by July 7-8, and they will be moved to the territory of Russia’s neighbor and ally quickly after that.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — For days, the Ukrainian teenager has waited in the attic, just down the street from the cemetery of her flooded town, marking time with her 83-year-old grandfather and two other elderly people and hoping for help to escape the deluge of a catastrophic dam collapse.

VILNIUS, June 9. /TASS/: The Estonian Foreign Ministry on Friday banned 58 Russians, including Patriarch Kirill, of Moscow and All Russia, from entering the country.

"Today, Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna reintroduced the ‘Magnitsky List,’ which bans 58 people, including the head of the Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill and nine people who persecuted and imprisoned human rights activist Vladimir Kara-Murza (recognized in Russia as a foreign agent - TASS) from entering Estonia," the Estonian Foreign Ministry said on its website.

NEW YORK (AP) — Two apologetic lawyers responding to an angry judge in Manhattan federal court blamed ChatGPT Thursday for tricking them into including fictitious legal research in a court filing.

Attorneys Steven A. Schwartz and Peter LoDuca are facing possible punishment over a filing in a lawsuit against an airline that included references to past court cases that Schwartz thought were real, but were actually invented by the artificial intelligence-powered chatbot.

08 June 2023; MEMO: Italy sought last-minute changes on Thursday to a tentative EU agreement on sharing out responsibility for looking after migrants and refugees, pushing for a cut in the number of people each country would take on Reuters reports.

Home affairs ministers from across the 27-member bloc are meeting to try seal a deal to end years of damaging feuds dating back to 2015, when more than a million people – mostly fleeing the war in Syria – reached the EU across the Mediterranean.

ISLAMABAD, Jun 9 (APP): A US-based human rights group “Justice for All” has drawn a parallel between the Hindutva ideology and the Niazis, citing the ongoing persecution of the minorities in India.

The organization’s report titled “The Nazification of India” compares 12 different mechanisms of hate and persecution from the Nazi playbook, and how they are being implemented in India today.

India, the largest democracy in the world has become the weakest at the hands of the fascist Hindutva ideology, said the report released by the Chicago-based human rights organization.

08 June 2023; MEMO: A Lebanese farmer from the town of Kafr Shuba defied an armoured Israeli bulldozer yesterday in an effort to stop it in its tracks, Anadolu has reported. The driver pushed soil on top of Ismail Nasser, covering his legs, before he stopped at the behest of UNIFIL forces.

DAMASCUS, Jun 9 (NNN-SANA) – Syria’s Industry Minister, Abdul Qader Jokhadar, vowed to restore the country’s industry to levels before the 12-year-war, the pro-government al-Watan online daily, reported yesterday.

He said that, the government is aware of the importance of the industrial sector and its contribution to boosting the national economy, vowing the status of the Syrian industry would be restored to what it used to be before the eruption of the Syrian war.

09 June 2023; MEMO: The UN is gathering evidence that could potentially be used in future prosecutions of those involved in Israel's expulsion of French-Palestinian human rights lawyer, Salah Hamouri.