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When French voters delivered Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party an overwhelming victory in this month’s European Parliament elections, President Emmanuel Macron took a risky and unexpected gamble. He called a snap election, set to begin this Sunday, in which the French people would be given a choice: replicate the decision made in the European elections and hand the far right the keys to national governance, or help thwart them by backing his centrist Renaissance party, which since 2022 has served in a minority government, instead. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] But Macron failed to anticipate that voters would have a third option.

TEL AVIV, Israel — The viability of a U. S.-backed proposal to wind down the 8-month-long war in Gaza was cast into doubt on Monday after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would only be willing to agree to a “partial” cease-fire deal that would not end the war, comments that sparked an uproar from families of hostages held by Hamas. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] In an interview broadcast late Sunday on Israeli Channel 14, a conservative, pro-Netanyahu station, the Israeli leader said he was “prepared to make a partial deal — this is no secret — that will return to us some of the people,” referring to the roughly 120 hostages still held in the Gaza Strip.

MOSCOW — Russia’s southern region of Dagestan held the first of three days of mourning Monday following a rampage by Islamic militants who killed 19 people, most of them police, and attacked houses of worship in apparently coordinated assaults in two cities. Sunday’s violence in Dagestan’s regional capital of Makhachkala and nearby Derbent was the latest that officials blamed on Islamic extremists in the predominantly Muslim region in the North Caucasus, as well as the deadliest in Russia since March, when gunmen opened fire at a concert in suburban Moscow, killing 145 people. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The affiliate of the Islamic State group in Afghanistan that claimed responsibility for March’s raid quickly praised the attack in Dagestan, saying it was conducted by “brothers in the Caucasus who showed that they are still strong.” The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War argued that the Islamic State group’s North Caucasus branch, Vilayat Kavkaz, likely was behind the attack, describing it as “complex and coordinated.” Dagestan Gov.

Little could be more symbolic of the power struggle playing out in Southeast Asia than what is happening on the outskirts of Ream National Park, in southern Cambodia. China is building a naval base on the site of a former U. S.-built military facility, and appears to be settling in for the long haul.

Over more than four decades, Bangladesh’s Grameen Bank has disbursed some $37 billion in collateral-free loans to over 10 million of the world’s poorest people. But founder Muhammad Yunus still remembers the first $5 he ever lent. It was 1974 and Yunus had recently returned from a teaching position at Middle Tennessee State University to his native Bangladesh, which three years earlier had won independence from Pakistan in a blood-soaked civil war.

SEOUL, South Korea — A fire likely sparked by exploding lithium batteries swept through a manufacturing factory near South Korea’s capital on Monday, killing 22 mostly Chinese migrant workers and injuring eight, officials said. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The fire began after batteries exploded while workers were examining and packaging them at the second floor of the factory in Hwaseong city, just south of Seoul, at around 10:30 a.m., fire officials said, citing a witness.