Ilan Troen's daughter Debbie Shahar Troen Mathias and son-in-law Shlomi Mathias died in the Hamas attack

In a few weeks, Republicans will hold their first presidential debate of the 2024 campaign

A volcanic eruption could destroy the Icelandic town of Grindavik or lead to extensive ash clouds, experts have warned. The country has been shaken by more than 800 small earthquakes today alone, prompting fears that the tremors could disrupt the Fagradalsfjall volcano on the Reykjanes peninsula in the southwest of the country. Almost 4,000 people were evacuated from Grindavik over the weekend as authorities feared that molten rock would rise to the surface of the earth and potentially hit the coastal town and a geothermal power station. Select residents of the town have been allowed to return briefly this week to save valuables and care for animals and pets. Ragga Agustsdottir, who lives close to Grindavik, said residents were fearful of what could happen if an eruption struck. “The scenario on the table now is that it will happen in or just north of the town of Grindavik. There’s no good option here,” she told The Independent. On Tuesday authorities scrambled to build a defence wall around the Svartsengi power plant, located just over six kilometers from Grindavik, to protect it from lava flows amid fears of an eruption. Read More Iceland earthquakes: Huge cracks appear on roads in volcano-threatened town Iceland earthquakes: Are flights still running amid fears of volcano eruption? Is it safe to travel to Iceland? Your rights if you have a holiday booked Could an Icelandic volcano ground flights like in 2010?

Typhoon Lan reached the coast of central Japan early Tuesday, grounding flights and halting trains as residents braced

Vladimir Putin arrived in Beijing on Tuesday for a rare trip abroad to join ally China in marking the 10th anniversary of an international cooperation forum. The two-day visit is only his second known trip abroad since the Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for the Russian leader in March over Ukraine war crime allegations. The Russian president and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping are holding talks to bolster their shared trade and security amid Western sanctions against Moscow over Mr Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Several other world leaders also arrived in Beijing for the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) forum championed by Mr Xi, including Vietnam’s president Vo Van Thuong, but Mr Putin is being heralded as the talks’ chief guest. The Russian presidential entourage was greeted by Chinese commerce minister Wang Wentao after Mr Putin’s plane touched down at the Beijing Capital International Airport on Tuesday. Beijing has supported Russia in rejecting resolutions on Ukraine in the United Nations Security Council, part of Western efforts to isolate Russia over the war. China has rejected Western criticism of its close partnership with Russia in spite of the war in Ukraine, which entered its 600th day on Monday. Mr Putin is expected to hold bilateral meetings with his counterparts from Vietnam, Thailand, Mongolia and Laos on Tuesday and attend the forum’s official opening reception hosted by Mr Xi, Tass news agency reported. On Wednesday, he will address the forum after Mr Xi as the chief guest and will meet the Chinese president for talks after. Before embarking on the trip, Mr Putin said in an interview with CCTV that he had met with Xi more than 40 times so far and the two have “many fond memories”. He praised China’s ambitious BRI project and said contrary to the West’s perception, Beijing was seeking cooperation and not to “put someone under its thumb”. China launched its signature BRI project in 2013 and funded $900bn in infrastructure and other projects to connect Asia with Africa and Europe through overland and maritime routes. The project has since faced many challenges, including concerns about debt sustainability and the impact of China’s economic slowdown. Mr Putin said his meeting with Mr Xi would encompass talks on Belt and Road-related projects, which he said Moscow wanted to link with efforts by an economic alliance of ex-Soviet Union nations mostly located in Central Asia to “achieve common development goal”. This is his second visit outside Russia after his visit to Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet republic, earlier this month. The ICC accused Mr Putin of committing a war crime by “illegally deporting children from Ukraine”. The ICC obliges the court’s 123 member states to arrest Mr Putin and transfer him to The Hague for trial if he sets foot on their territory. The Kremlin leader last visited China for the Beijing Winter Olympics in February 2022 when Mr Xi declared a “no-limits" partnership with Russia. Mr Xi met Mr Putin in March during a three-day trip to Moscow amid the Pentagon’s fears of Beijing’s potential military cooperation between the two countries for supplying weapons to be used in Ukraine. They greeted one another as “dear friend” when they met in the Kremlin, and held informal talks for over four hours. Read More Russia mounts ‘intensive’ offensive to break ‘powerful’ Ukrainian defences in Kupiansk-Lyman Ukraine-Russia war – live: Putin suffers serious losses in largest offensive in months Viral hate and misinformation amid Israel-Hamas crisis renew fears of real-world violence

FOX NFL announcing teams.

Americans across the country are observing the relatively new Juneteenth federal holiday with festivals, parades, cookouts and other gatherings

WASHINGTON President Joe Biden on Wednesday nominated one of his top national security aides, Kurt Campbell, as deputy

Federal prosecutors presented tearful testimony Tuesday from the mother of a sickly toddler who was whisked away from his Georgia home by relatives without her permission to a remote desert encampment in northern New Mexico where he died

While driving along Pacific Coast Highway, the 51-year-old comedian found himself in a collision with another vehicle driven by a 51-year-old man

Manchester City were often described as the best team in the world, even before the Champions League that had long eluded them gave them a greater claim to that title. It was more contentious when their chairman, Khaldoon Al Mubarak, called them “the No 1 football brand in the world”. The alternative argument is that City are not even the leading football brand in Manchester. But at a point when Manchester United is up for sale and the Glazers want $6 billion, it was notable that Al Mubarak described the value of the City Football Group as over $6 billion. The picture he painted in his end-of-season address was of financial and footballing success with some of the world’s best executives, scouts and sporting staff. Certainly that description applies to Pep Guardiola. And yet this could not simply be the celebration of a transformation, a 15-year journey from a team who were in the relegation zone at Christmas a few months after Sheikh Mansour’s takeover to one who demolished Bayern Munich and Real Madrid, to the situation where Erling Haaland signed a contract and told Al Mubarak he would win him the Champions League. “To show you where Erling is going, this is the beginning,” Al Mubarak said. “And the scary part, this is just the beginning for him.” In a way, it is just the beginning for City, too: just not quite in the same respect. Al Mubarak said it was “very frustrating” the treble has come against the backdrop of 115 charges by the Premier League. The Emirati promised a “very blunt” response, but only when the legal process has happened. The question if these are tainted, tarnished titles will linger; perhaps forever, certainly until a case is finally heard. Some might argue there is an irony there. Al Mubarak had claimed Sheikh Mansour has given “passion to the club”; that the Champions League final was just the second game the owner had seen in the flesh might suggest he has a different way of showing it but, with his billions, he has been the architect of a rise. But if sportswashing is intended to launder reputations, City instead find their achievements and character impugned. The issues, however, do not surround the all-conquering 2022-23 season as much as how City got here; how they constructed the platform that took them to such heights and whether the financing that allowed them to build to this point amounted to repeated and deliberate breaches of regulations. On the pitch, City attract admiring glances. Al Mubarak claimed that, at a Uefa dinner the night before the Champions League final, he was asked what was special about City. “The winning mentality,” he replied, and that is not something that can simply be bought. He reflected on the hunger of Haaland, who reacted to his five-goal salvo against RB Leipzig by thinking he should have scored seven or eight, and the humility of the World Cup winner Julian Alvarez. He talked about how City have executives that rival clubs are trying to hire and the excellence of their medical staff. “Unheralded heroes,” he said. There was a point to the praise. There is a misconception that City can call upon a vast pool of players. “We have a high-quality small squad,” Al Mubarak countered. “But it’s not what I think is the perception, which is that we operate with a huge squad; that is not the case.” It is partly Guardiola’s preference but they are operating with around 18 top-class options, some of them very expensive, not a cast of thousands, like Chelsea. “People will throw at us, ‘the biggest spenders’, ‘you have the biggest squad,’” he said. Yet City should have few problems with Financial Fair Play now. “Look at our net spend figures,” Al Mubarak added. In a summer when they signed Haaland, they made a transfer-market profit, partly because of the departures of Raheem Sterling, Gabriel Jesus and Oleksandr Zinchenko, partly because they banked around £50 million by selling four youth-team products to Southampton. There were years of vast outlay. Now City has become a business with revenue streams. “We have a commercial machine that is one of the best in the world,” Al Mubarak said; some may disagree – many of their sponsorships come from the United Arab Emirates, some from companies connected to Sheikh Mansour – but City’s problem is not the present or the future, but the past and how they got here. For now, they have Guardiola tied up for another two years – Al Mubarak said he was “never concerned” before the Catalan extended his contract – an outstanding team and the opportunity to strengthen it. The outlook should be sunny but there are still clouds on the landscape. Read More Man City chairman vows to give ‘very blunt views’ on FFP charges once concluded Saudi Arabia can help Chelsea solve headache — but talks raise more questions than answers Sportswashing is about to change football beyond anything you can imagine

Mateo Kovacic transfer news: Man City make first move in efforts to sign midfielder from Chelsea.