Armed assailants tried to kidnap the daughter and grandson of a French cryptocurrency boss in Paris, police said, in a brazen daytime attack that was caught on camera. Tuesday morning’s attack in Paris’s 11th district is the latest in a string of violent incidents targeting figures in France’s burgeoning crypto industry. Four masked men attacked the daughter, her partner and their child in the French capital, police sources told French news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP). Video footage shows three masked men jump out of a white van with branding from the Chronopost delivery company. The woman and her partner fight the attackers and loud screams for help are heard. Speaking to BFMTV, one witness said the assailants tried to “pull a young woman by force” into the waiting vehicle. The woman can be seen grabbing a gun off one of the masked men and throwing it into the street. The…

Severe wildfires raging in a Siberian region of Russia have engulfed more than 600,000 hectares of forest, local authorities have warned. In the Eastern Siberian territory of Zabaykalsky Krai, a federal-level state of emergencies has been in place since late April, Russian state news agency TASS reported. Despite huge efforts to tackle wildfire outbreaks in the region, which borders Mongolia, 49 forest fires continue to burn, with a total area exceeding 629,000 hectares, the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations said Wednesday. Since the beginning of this year, more than 1.4 million hectares of land have been affected by wildfires, according to figures from Russia’s Federal Agency for Forestry published on Tuesday, about three times the total area affected by fires in the United States and Canada so far this year combined. Smoke from the fires is seen spreading for hundreds of miles, and forecasts from Copernicus, Europe’s climate change service,…

A Venezuelan toddler who had been kept in US government custody after her parents were deported has been returned to Venezuela. Maikelys Antonella Espinoza Bernal arrived at the Simón Bolívar International Airport on Wednesday on a repatriation flight from the US. Venezuelan First Lady Cilia Flores carried the 2-year-old in her arms as officials announced the girl’s return to reporters gathered at the airport. “Today we have a great victory,” Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello said. Venezuela had been demanding that the United States return the girl for weeks, accusing US officials of kidnapping her. The US Department of Homeland Security previously denied the allegation, arguing the family was separated in an attempt to protect Maikelys from her parents, whom they accused without evidence of being part of criminal group Tren de Aragua (TDA). This is a developing story and will be updated. This post appeared first on cnn.com

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky might meet Russia’s President Vladimir Putin in Turkey on Thursday – if the Russian leader decides to show up for a summit that he himself suggested. The possibility of the two men meeting face-to-face has caused major excitement, but the Kremlin has so far declined to say who is coming to Turkey and Russian officials have spent days preparing justifications and excuses for Putin’s absence. The talks are unlikely to yield immediate results, and they almost certainly won’t bring the elusive “deal” US President Donald Trump has been promising since returning to the White House in January. Yet despite the caveats, a direct meeting between Kyiv and Moscow at any level would mark a milestone in the conflict. The two are not known to have held direct talks since soon after Moscow launched its unprovoked, full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Here is what we…

US President Donald Trump on Wednesday had tea with a former jihadist who until recently had a $10 million US bounty on his head. Interim Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, once known by his militant nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, met Trump in Riyadh six months after leading a swift campaign that toppled the half-a-century-old Assad regime, ejecting Iran-backed armed groups and declaring himself leader of the country. Al Sharaa was placed on the US Specially Designated Global Terrorist list in 2013 for heading al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, known as Al Nusra Front, and allegedly orchestrating suicide bombings across Syria. The Saudi-born former jihadist had spent years fighting US forces in Iraq before moving to Syria to lead an armed Islamist rebellion that ousted the brutal dictator Bashar al-Assad. The meeting, described by Syria as “historic,” was the first between a US and Syrian president in 25 years, taking…

Jimmy Donaldson, better known as MrBeast, is at the center of another controversy, and this time it directly involves Mexico. MrBeast, who is by far the YouTuber with the most subscribers in the world (surpassing the second-place user by almost 100 million), published a video on May 10th in which he visited some of Mexico’s most important archaeological sites, including Chichén Itzá in the state of Yucatán, home to the Temple of Kukulkan pyramid, known as El Castillo, one of the seven wonders of the modern world. MrBeast also visited the archaeological sites of Calakmul in the state of Campeche and Balamcanché in Yucatán. The video, which as of Wednesday afternoon has accumulated more than 55 million views, shows MrBeast and his team in the surroundings of Kukulkan, but also inside other archaeological structures, in cenotes and temples. Some of these sites are not permanently accessible to the public, as…

Valeria Marquez was addressing her TikTok followers in a livestream from her beauty salon in Zapopan, Mexico, when someone arrived at her door to deliver a small parcel. “He’s a little piglet!” the 23-year-old beauty influencer exclaimed as she returned to her viewers and unwrapped the stuffed animal, smiling as she tossed her long blonde hair over her shoulder. Moments later she was dead, slumped over in her chair with blood pooling on the desk in front of her, even as the livestream continued. The footage ended only when another person picked up her phone, their face momentarily showing to viewers. According to the state of Jalisco’s Attorney General’s office, Marquez was shot dead by a male intruder into her salon in a case it is investigating as a suspected femicide – the killing of a woman or girl for gender-based reasons. The death of Marquez – a public figure…

Sudden, hurricane-force winds toppled the luxury Bayesian superyacht that sank off the coast of Sicily last August, according to an interim report into the disaster, which found the boat had “vulnerabilities” to extreme wind which were not known to the owner or crew. The 184-foot sailing boat owned by British tech tycoon Mike Lynch was anchored about a half mile from the port of Porticello on the Italian island’s northern coast when it sank, killing seven people, including Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah. The interim report by the UK’s Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) gives a detailed account of the hours before the Bayesian suddenly capsized and the desperate escape attempts by the 12 guests and 10 crew on board in the moments after. On the evening of August 13 when Bayesian’s guests and some of its crew retired for the night, the seas were calm and the winds…