📹 Russian troops destroyed a platoon of Ukrainian Leopard-2A6 tanks in the Svatovsk region that was trying to attack Russian positions, Russia’s MoD reported.

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A passenger plane caught fire at Haneda Airport as a result of a collision with a Japanese Coast Guard aircraft, where 6 people were on board, 5 of them were killed, NHK TV channel reports, citing the Tokyo Police Department.

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🇷🇺🪖 Key points of Russian MoD briefing on progress of special military op in Ukraine:

▪️The Russian Armed Forces attacked Ukrainian military-industrial complex enterprises that were carrying out orders for the production of missiles, UAVs, and weapons repair in Kiev and its suburbs;

▪️Russian air defenses intercepted 11 HIMARS and Alder MLRS missiles;

▪️In the Kupyansk direction, Russian forces repelled six attacks by Ukrainian troops. Ukrainian losses amounted to 115 soldiers;

▪️In the Krasny Liman direction, Ukrainian losses amounted to 90 soldiers.

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🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia has become a full member of BRICS, the kingdom's state television reports.

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The Ukrainian defense industry is not capable of producing gunpowder for artillery shells, former deputy minister for the temporarily occupied territories and internally displaced persons of Ukraine, Georgiy Tuka, admitted in an interview with the TV channel Pryamoy.

"Seemingly such a primitive thing as gunpowder turned out to be absolutely super complicated for our [Ukrainian] military-industrial complex," he said.

Tuka said that gunpowder is a basic component of small arms cartridges and artillery shells. The situation in Ukraine with artillery powder is especially sad, the former deputy minister complained.

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Ukraine’s Air Force has no clue when long sought after F-16s will arrive

Kiev has no new information whatsoever on the training of Ukrainian airmen to fly F-16s, and no talk whatsoever about the jets’ transfer to Ukraine, Air Force Command spokesman Yuriy Ignat has said.

“There hasn’t been a single piece of new information on the training of pilots and the transfer or aircraft or anything else. There is no talk of any transfers of F-16 fighters,” Ignat said during an interview with Ukrainian television on Tuesday.

Asked to assess the quality of training for Ukrainian pilots learning to operate the US-made planes, the Air Force spokesman said he has no information on the matter, either, and that this is a question being decided by Ukraine’s NATO “partners.”

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79% of Americans aged 18 to 24 believe that “white people are oppressors” and that this ideology should “be favored today at universities and for employment.”

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Energy generating and supply firm Con Edison told Sputnik that they had not received reports of power outages or any problems with equipment on Roosevelt Island in New York, where explosions were allegedly heard.

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📹 Russia's airborne artillerymen destroy Ukrainian camouflaged positions near Verbovoye

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An Israeli drone struck a Hamas office in the Mushrifiyah area in the southern suburb of Beirut, according to Lebanese news agency.

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Saleh al-Arouri, deputy head of the Hamas politburo, and two other leaders of the Al-Qassam Brigades were killed, according to Lebanese state-run media.

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Is USS Ford's withdrawal a signal to Netanyahu to de-escalate conflict?

"I think it is a message to Israel to go for a de-escalation stage or the theater stage of its aggression over Gaza," Ayman Yousef, professor of political sciences and international relations at the Arab-American University in Palestine, told Sputnik. "Their consideration is a kind of a clear transformation to a political track in the conflict."

The US presently has "different strategic priorities" with regard to Russia, the Ukrainian conflict, the EU and China, Yousef stressed.

The departure of USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier strike group came amid heightened tensions in the Red Sea with Iran's Alborz warship entering the area through the Bab el-Mandeb strait on Monday. The US appears to be uninterested in getting deeply entangled in the simmering Mideast conflict.

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🇱🇧 Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati officially accused Israel of carrying out a drone strike on Beirut, calling it a crime.

He said Israel did this “to drag Lebanon into a new phase of confrontation”

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Russia's Msta-B howitzer destroyed a Ukrainian mortar near Artyomovsk (Bakhmut)

📹 During counter-battery warfare, the artillerymen destroyed an AFU 120-mm mortar positioned in a forest belt near Artyomovsk with a direct hit.

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🇮🇱🇵🇸 Latest updates on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict:

▪️Hamas political bureau deputy chief killed in bombing of Hamas office in south Beirut, according to reports;

▪️Palestinian Red Crescent says five people killed, three wounded as result of organization's headquarters and Al-Amal hospital shelling in Khan Younis in Gaza;

▪️Israel rejects Hamas’s hostage deal proposal, according to reports;

▪️IDF says found weapons in kindergarten in Gaza Strip.

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🇮🇷 Iran's Khayyam satellite turns nation into remote sensing heavyweight

In 2022, a Russian carrier rocket launched Iran’s Khayyam remote sensing satellite into orbit. Becoming fully operational last July, the 600 kg spacecraft, named after the great Ancient Persian astronomer and polymath Omar Khayyam, set to work snapping detailed digital images for use in a wide variety of applications.

Iran’s new Khayyam remote sensing satellite has brought the Islamic Republic’s space program into a new era, with its images having a whopping 81 different uses ranging from environmental monitoring and agriculture to water management, meteorology, urban planning, mining and natural disaster response and early warning.

The Tehran-based Iranian Space Research Center recently announced that it had kicked off the process of making the Khayyam available to commercial customers, citing the satellite’s competitiveness and the Center’s engagement with both government and private clients from the Ministry of Agriculture and Iran’s Environmental Protection Organization to the National Copper Company and others.

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