The United Nations Security Council has called on South Sudan’s neighbors to help end renewed fighting between government forces and former rebels in the country. In a closed-door meeting on Sunday, the council also demanded that both sides of the conflict “do their utmost to control their respective forces, urgently end the fighting and prevent the spread of violence, and genuinely commit themselves to the full and immediate implementation of the peace agreement,” reached in August 2015.

The 15-member council further asked for additional peacekeepers in the African country. Earlier, a UN mission spokeswoman, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there were around 50 to 60 casualties in Sunday’s clashes in the capital Juba as former rebels and government soldiers exchanged fire in several parts of the capital. The violence forced thousands of people to flee the city.

This comes after more than 300 people, including many civilians and a Chinese peacekeeper, lost their lives during heavy gun battle in Juba on Thursday and Friday. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said on Friday he was “shocked and appalled” by the fighting between the Juba government troops and rebels, urging both sides to halt the violence.

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An Israeli official says the details of an investigation into allegations of large-scale money laundering by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be made public soon. The official, whose name was not mentioned in reports, said on Saturday that police believe that they have adequate evidence to make the probe public this week or early next week.

Some of the inquiry materials had originated in other, unrelated investigations, but they have now been linked to the money laundering case involving the Israeli prime minister. The police and the attorney general’s office think it is untenable to keep the investigation secret anymore due to its sensitivity, he said, adding that a decision was made to make an official announcement about the case.

Police have so far prevented leaks to the media concerning the probe, but there were reports of people being summoned for questioning by the police’s anti-fraud unit. Recently, Israeli media said the investigation against Netanyahu focuses on foreign funds he received after resuming office in 2009. The premier has dismissed the allegations.

Netanyahu is also implicated in a separate fraud case involving French tycoon Arnaud Mimran, who is said to have previously made unrelated donations to the Israeli premier. Earlier this week, a French court convicted Mimran of fraud and sentenced him to eight years in prison and one million euros in fines in a 2008-2009 fraud case. On Friday, Channel 10 reported that the latest police investigation into Netanyahu’s affairs involves suspicions of money laundering on a wide-scale.

The suspicion pertains to the alleged transfer of “large sums” to either Netanyahu or one of his family members and is not linked to campaign or political funding, it said.  The television said the investigation may require questioning abroad, but no investigators have yet been sent out of Israel.

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An African American man has been shot and killed by police amid massive protests over the killings of two other black men in the US this week. Alva Braziel, 38, was shot and killed by two police officers in Houston, Texas on Saturday morning, according to the Houston Police Department.

The officers said that the man was holding a revolver and did not listen to their orders until they shot him multiple times. Police spokeswoman Jodi Silva said that the officers got out of their patrol vehicle to talk to the man and ordered him to lower the weapon. “He instead deliberately and slowly lowers his arm and allows it to come to a stop at his waist,” Silva said. “Now the gun is pointed directly at officers.”

Officers then shot the man, who did not fire his gun. He died at the scene. A neighbor said that police are targeting black men in the area. “It’s like we got a target on our back even if we’re innocent, it hurts,” said Eric Puckett, a bystander. “You don’t even want to walk outside your house any more. But to all the young black men and young black women out there, all black people, do something positive.”

The new shooting happened after 37-year-old Alton Sterling was fatally shot by police in the southeastern city of Baton Rouge, Louisiana On Tuesday and  32-year-old Philando Castile was shot dead Wednesday by a police officer near St. Paul, Minnesota. Since the shootings, there have been numerous ‘Black Lives Matter” protests in different cities in the United States.

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Russia says it has expelled two US diplomats in a retaliatory move after Washington made two Russian officials leave the United States in the wake of an attack on an American diplomat outside the US embassy in Moscow last month.

“After their unfriendly step, two employees of the United States embassy had to leave Moscow. They were declared persona non grata for activities incompatible with their diplomatic status,” said Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov in a statement on Saturday. He also stated that the officials were CIA agents.

“We hope Washington recognizes all the same the perversity of its anti-Russian line. If they decide to move further along the path of escalation it will not remain unanswered,” Ryabkov warned. The news of expulsion came hours after John Kirby, the US Department of State spokesman, announced that on June 17 Washington told “two Russian officials” to leave the United States in order to “respond to this attack.”

The Russian Foreign Ministry says the assaulted American was a CIA agent, who on June 6 refused to show his identification documents and punched the guard in the face. However, the US State Department says the attack was “unprovoked and it endangered the safety of our employee.”

Kirby further said “the Russian claim that the policeman was protecting the embassy from an unidentified individual is simply untrue.” The Russian security services had “intensified their harassment against US personnel in an effort to disrupt our diplomatic and consular operations,” he added, noting that Washington had privately “urged” Moscow to stop such behavior.

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A French court has sentenced to eight years in jail a tycoon, who previously made unrelated donations to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, over a massive fraud scheme. Arnaud Mimran was convicted of fraud on Thursday and sentenced to eight years in prison and one million-euro fine for the 2008-2009 fraud, which French authorities say resulted in a major tax shortfall.

Mimran has been on trial as a key suspect in a 283 million-euro scam in the trade and taxation of carbon emissions permits. Ten other defendants were also given prison terms ranging from one to eight years and six were also fined 1 million euros.  All the defendants were convicted of aggravated fraud and money-laundering.

Half of the defendants were tried in absentia and one person was acquitted. The tax scam case has been described as “the heist of a century” by French authorities. During his trial, the French magnate also testified that on another occasion he had made 1 million euros to Netanyahu’s election campaign. Netanyahu’s office has denied any campaign payments and said the contribution was made in 2001 to a fund used while he held no office.

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Following the release of the British Chilcot Inquiry report into the Iraq war, former US president George W. Bush has defended the decision to invade Iraq together with the UK in 2003. Bush said on Wednesday that the world was a better place after the ouster of Iraq’s former dictator Saddam Hussain. The remarks came hours after the publication of the lengthy inquiry, led by Sir John Chilcot, into the UK’s role before, after and during the war in Iraq.

The 2.6 million-word Chilcot report said that the invasion of Iraq was not the “last resort” action presented to British MPs and the public. It added that there was no “imminent threat” from Saddam at the time and that the intelligence case was not “justified.” The report also said former British Prime Minister Tony Blair overstated the threat posed by Saddam’s supposed Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs), deployed ill-prepared forces to the Arab country and had “wholly” inadequate plans for after Saddam’s ouster.

Bush’s spokesman Freddy Ford said in a statement that Bush was hosting wounded military veterans for a bike ride in his ranch in Texas on Wednesday. “Despite the intelligence failures and other mistakes he has acknowledged previously, President Bush continues to believe the whole world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power,” Ford said. “There was no stronger ally than the United Kingdom under the leadership of Prime Minister Tony Blair,” he added.

Some 179 British troops were killed in Iraq between 2003 and 2009, when the UK decided to withdraw its forces from the country. Families of the dead soldiers have said their loved ones had died unnecessarily. Speaking at a news conference after the release of the Chilcot report, Blair once again said his decision to involve the UK in the invasion was “right,” noting that he did not agree with the idea that those who died or were injured in Iraq “made their sacrifice in vain” as they had played their part in “the defining global security struggle of the 21st century against the terrorism and violence which the world over destroys lives, divides communities.”

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