Olga Pimanova, a Russian citizen, has been "held like a hostage" in the US after being arrested at a Chicago airport because her ex-husband claimed she had "abducted" her Russian-born daughter, said ombudsman for children rights Pavel Astakhov.

Pimanova, 30, arrived in Chicago, Illinois, on May 20 to pass her MBA exams, only to be immediately arrested at the airport. She was taken into custody by Cook County sheriffs acting on a local court order that was issued as a result of her husband filing a case accusing her of kidnapping her own child, which he believes to be his daughter. The mother was placed under house arrest at her friend's house in Illinois after enduring three days in detention along with criminal suspects, her lawyer says.

Astakhov wrote on his Twitter page that Pimanova "was arrested on a phony pretext and has been held as a hostage, being requested to return the daughter - a Russian citizen - to the USA."

A Delhi court has convicted five men of kidnapping, gang-raping and robbing a Danish tourist in 2014. The ruling is the latest to highlight India's high rate of sexual violence against women.

The Monday verdict, announced by Additional Sessions Judge Ramesh Kumar, found all five men guilty of robbing and raping the 52-year-old woman at knife-point on the night of January 14, 2014, after leading her to a secluded spot near New Delhi Railway Station.

The woman, who was traveling alone at the time, was attacked as she approached the group of men for directions after becoming lost on the way back to her hotel.

"I pronounce all the accused guilty. Arguments [on sentencing] to be held on June 9," Kumar told the court on Monday, The Times of India reported.

The defendants, all of whom were present in court on Monday, are in their 20s. Three minors are also charged, and are being tried separately in the juvenile justice system. A ninth person accused of the crimes died in February.

The 2014 attack was the latest in a string of violent crimes against tourists in India. That same week, an 18-year-old German charity worker was reportedly raped on a train as she traveled from Mangalore to Chennai.

Several people are confirmed dead and dozens were treated for injuries and stress after a passenger train crashed into a cargo train in the Belgian town of Hermalle-sous-Huy near the city of Liege, badly damaging two of its cars.

A briefing with Belgian authorities, including Minister of Mobility Francois Bellot, confirmed that three people were killed in the crash, while nine were brought to a hospital for treatment, some in critical condition. Another 27 passengers received help at the site and were later allowed to go home.

The death toll could rise further, the mayor of Saint-Georges-sur-Meuse, Francis Dejon, told Belga news agency early on Monday.

The collision was extremely violent, the agency reported.

Up to 25,000 Damascus residents and refugees from war-torn areas of Syria will be offered pre-dawn and sunset meals each day during Ramadan, the holy month for Muslims, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has promised.

"My dear mother, the president of the Regional Public Fund (ROF), has decided to organize daily pre-dawn and sunset meals for residents of Damascus and refugees from war-torn parts of Syria," Chechen leader Kadyrov wrote on Instagram on Monday.

Practicing Muslims all over the world are preparing for the month of Ramadan, said to be the longest in decades as it coincides with the summer solstice, meaning a longer period of fasting. Many Muslims will not drink water or eat during daytime, with fasting ending at sunset with a meal known as Iftar.

A gunman apparently acting alone killed five Jordanian intelligence agents on Monday (June 6) in a daylight "terrorist attack" on their office in a Palestinian refugee camp north of the capital.

Jordan is a leading member of the US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group, and has been the target of militant attacks in the past.

"The intelligence agency office in the Baqaa camp was the target of a cowardly attack shortly before 7:00 am (0400 GMT) today that left five agents dead," government spokesman Mohammed Momani said.

Momani said security forces were investigating who was responsible for the "terrorist attack" on the first day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

A security source told AFP that preliminary findings suggested the attack was carried out by a lone gunman who opened fire with an automatic weapon before escaping.

The shooting happened as the team members were starting their shift.

Following two scandals involving the US military stationed on the Japanese island of Okinawa, a US Navy sailor was caught in a drunk-driving head-on collision with two other cars. The crash occurred off-base, despite tough new rules for personnel.

Aimee Mejia, 21, stationed at the Kadena Air Base, was driving in the opposite lane to the two vehicles, her blood alcohol level six times the legal limit, at about 11:40 pm local time on June 4, the Asahi Shimbun learned from the police. Two individuals in the other vehicles sustained injuries.

The incident comes at a troubled time for the US base in Okinawa. Already highly unpopular with locals, the US military found itself in the middle of two scandals involving a murder and a rape - both of the victims young Japanese women.

Faced with popular outrage, the US military put its servicemen on a short leash, with curfews, movement restrictions and a ban on drinking alcohol off base.

The six-week Verizon strike ended after tentative deals were reached between the company and the unions representing its workers. Those workers will still need to vote on the deals before things are set in stone, but it seems likely they will vote in favor. What does it mean?

From the New York Times:

Both sides claimed victory in the change.

"We only care that our members somewhere in the footprint are doing the work," said Robert Master, assistant to the District 1 vice president of the Communications Workers of America. "The push to outsource call center work was rebuffed."

Lending partial vindication to this claim was a commitment by the company to create over 1,000 unionized call center jobs over the next four years to accommodate new demand from customers. The company also agreed to reduce the number of call center closings.

The company also won the right to offer buyout incentives to employees once a year without first getting the union's blessing, making it easier to eliminate jobs that the new rule could eventually render obsolete.

Elsewhere, the outcome appeared more one-sided. The unions managed to beat back proposed pension cuts, including a cap on the accrual of pension benefits after 30 years of service.

The company also agreed to withdraw a proposal that would have allowed it to relocate workers for up to two months anywhere in its geographic coverage area, although it had already expressed an openness to withdrawing the proposal before the strike.

Proposals to change seniority rules and to make the company's sickness and disability policy more strict were also withdrawn, and the company agreed to change a performance review program in New York City that many workers considered abusive.

Significantly, the new contracts also cover some 65 unionized workers at Verizon Wireless stores, signaling the first time that retail wireless workers at the company have been included in a union contract, a potentially important precedent.

Makhlouf was killed near the city of Shahba in a shooting and explosion of his car on Damascus-Sweida road on Wednesday, the Arabic-language media outlets announced.

Alaa Makhlouf was from the village of Marj Moirban in al-Qardaheh region in Lattakia. He was an activist of Asma al-Assad humanitarian group.

Since the start of the Syrian crisis in March 2011, the western countries, including the US, have delivered state-of-the-art weapons to the terrorists in Syria.

"Why don't you share good things about Israel?"

A few days ago, a very good Palestinian friend of mine shared a post on Facebook, about Israeli Skinheads. It referred to activists of the fascist Kahane Hai movement. Rabbi Meir Kahane, who was convicted in 1971 for a terrorist bomb-plot of the Jewish Defense League, became a member of Knesset in 1984, until his party was banned from Knesset in 1988. He inspired some of the most radical religious-nationalism in Israeli history.

A Jewish-Israeli kibbutznik contact responded with the comment: "Why don't you share good things about Israel, we are many more than these few idiots?"

It is worth noting here, that my friend is actually involved in quite serious and close debate with prominent Zionist Israelis, including leading editors.

The response intrigued me because I was just planning to write this article, circling exactly around this question, which I had been asked in various forms over the past few years. This comes in various forms, but the nerve is similar - it is the suggestion that this is not representative of Israel as a whole.

Whilst I cannot reveal the sources of the following quotes, I would like to provide a few examples to demonstrate what I mean:

Matthew Desmond's book, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, like Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed, is a heartbreaking snapshot of the rapacious exploitation and misery we inflict on the most vulnerable, especially children. It is a picture of a world where industries have been created to fleece the poor, and destroy neighborhoods and ultimately lives. It portrays a judicial system that has broken down, a dysfunctional social service system and the license in neoliberal America to carry out unchecked greed, no matter what the cost.

"Her face had that look," Desmond wrote. "The movers and the deputies knew it well. It was the look of someone realizing that her family would be homeless in a matter of hours. It was something like denial giving way to the surrealism of the scene: the speed and the violence of it all; sheriffs leaning against your wall, hands resting on holsters; all these strangers, these sweating men, piling your things outside, drinking water from your sink poured into your cups, using your bathroom. It was the look of being undone by a wave of questions. What do I need for tonight, for this week? Who should I call? Where is the medication? Where will we go? It was the face of a mother who climbs out of the cellar to find the tornado has leveled the house."

Being poor in America is one long emergency. You teeter on the edge of bankruptcy, homelessness and hunger. You endure cataclysmic levels of stress, harassment and anxiety and long bouts of depression. Rent strips you of half your income—one in four families spend 70 percent of their income on rent—until you and your children are evicted, often into homeless shelters or abandoned buildings, when you fall behind on payments. A financial crisis—a medical emergency, a reduction in hours at work or the loss of a job, funeral expenses or car repairs—can lead inexorably to an eviction. Creditors, payday lenders and collection agencies hound you. You are often forced to declare bankruptcy. You cope with endemic violence, gangs, drugs and a judicial system that permits brutal police abuse and ships you to jail, or slaps you with huge fines, for minor offenses. You live for weeks or months with no heat, water or electricity because you cannot pay the utility bills, especially since fuel and utility rates have risen by more than 50 percent since 2000. Single mothers and their children usually endure this hell alone, because the men in these communities are locked up. Millions of families are tossed into the street every year.