KHERSON, Ukraine (AP) — Exclusive drone footage of the collapsed Ukrainian dam and surrounding villages under Russian occupation showed the ruined structure falling into the flooded river, hundreds of submerged homes, greenhouses, even a church — and no evidence of an attack from above, as Russia alleges.

An Associated Press team flew a drone over the devastation on Wednesday, a day after the destruction of the Kakhovka dam on the Dnieper River.

WASHINGTON, June 8 (Reuters) - China has reached a secret deal with Cuba to establish an electronic eavesdropping facility on the island roughly 100 miles (160 km) from Florida, the Wall Street Journal said on Thursday, but the White House cast some doubt on the report.

Such a spy installation would allow Beijing to gather electronic communications from the southeastern U.S., which houses many U.S. military bases, as well as monitor ship traffic, the newspaper reported, citing U.S. officials familiar with classified intelligence.

MOSCOW, June 8 (Reuters) - For more than 15 months Russia has been fighting a war in Ukraine that the Kremlin refused to call a war - but that is changing: President Vladimir Putin is using the word "war" more often.

When Putin sent troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24 last year, he called it "a special military operation" - a euphemism the Kremlin, Russian ministers and state media mostly stuck to, even coining a new Russian acronym, the "SVO".

MINSK, June 8. /TASS/: The Ukrainian leadership was ready to settle the conflict with Russia but gave up under the US pressure, Russia’s Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev said on Thursday.

07 June 2023; MEMO: Iran is to get access to $24 billion of its frozen assets, including more than $10bn in Iraq and $7bn in South Korea, ISNA reported yesterday. The agency said that the development came after the visit of the Sultan of Oman, Haitham Bin Tariq, to Iran, and the visit of US President Joe Biden's senior advisor for the Middle East, Brett McGurk, to Muscat.

07 June 2023; MEMO: QatarEnergy has signed a 15-year supply deal for liquefied natural gas (LNG) with Bangladesh's state-owned PetroBangla for 1.8 million tonnes a year starting in 2026, CEO Saad Al-Kaabi said on Thursday, Reuters reports.

According to the report, the latest contract with an Asian customer by the world's top LNG exporter comes when Western countries, including Germany, push to win a chunk of the Qatari gas, as competition ramped up following the Ukraine war.

TAIPEI, June 8 (Reuters) - Taiwan activated its defence systems on Thursday after reporting 37 Chinese military aircraft flying into the island's air defence zone, some of which then flew into the western Pacific, in Beijing's latest mass air incursion.

China, which views democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory, has over the past three years regularly flown its air force into the skies near the island, though not into Taiwan's territorial air space.

WASHINGTON, June 7 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Ambassador to the United States Xie Feng said here Wednesday that the two countries need to uphold the principles of mutual respect, peaceful co-existence and win-win cooperation and explore the right way to get along in the new era.

Xie gave those remarks when delivering a keynote speech at an event hosted by the U.S.-China Business Council to welcome him as China's new ambassador to the United States.

07 June 2023; MEMO: The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has called for an independent international investigation into the killing of Palestinian toddler Muhammad Al-Tamimi. The 30-month-old child was shot in the head last Thursday by an Israeli soldier in the village of Nabi Saleh, west of Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank and died of his wounds on Monday.

KHERSON, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces Thursday shelled a southern Ukrainian city inundated by flooding in a catastrophic dam collapse, Ukrainian officials said, forcing a suspension of some rescue efforts hours after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy went to the area to assess the damage.

The fresh fighting returned security issues to the region, two days after the collapse of the Kakhovka dam on the Dnieper River set off a scramble to evacuate residents in dozens of flooded areas and get aid to those still there.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday issued a surprising 5-4 ruling in favor of Black voters in a congressional redistricting case from Alabama, with two conservative justices joining liberals in rejecting a Republican-led effort to weaken a landmark voting rights law.

07 June 2023; MEMO: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed on Tuesday to re-submit a proposal to amend the constitution for parliament to consider, Anadolu has reported.

Erdogan made his comment during a press conference after convening his cabinet for the first time since winning the 28 May presidential election run-off. He stressed that the vision represented by the amendment is based on "stability and trust".