Russian authorities have urged people in the border regions to stop using dating apps and limit their use of social media to prevent Ukrainian forces from gathering intelligence as it presses on with its incursion into the Kursk region.

Russia’s interior ministry issued the plea on Tuesday, telling residents of Bryansk, Kursk, and Belgorod regions as well as military and police personnel stationed in the area territories to refrain from using “online dating services” and be mindful of streaming videos from sensitive locations.

“The enemy actively uses such resources for information gathering,” the ministry said in a post on its official Telegram channel.

As Ukrainian troops continued their advances through Russian territory, the ministry issued a long list of recommendations, advising people not to open any hyperlinks in messages received from strangers and not to stream videos from roads where military vehicles were present.

Authorities also warned citizens that Ukrainian forces were connecting to “unprotected CCTV cameras remotely, viewing everything – from private yards to roads and highways of strategic importance.”

Troops and police officers were advised to remove all geo-tagging on their social media, as “the enemy monitors social networks in real time by these tags and reveals the actual location of military and security forces.”

Ukriane’s offensive into the Kursk region has left Russia struggling to shore up its own territory. On Tuesday, Ukrainian military chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said Ukrainian troops had advanced up to 35 kilometers (21.7 miles) through Russian defenses since the start of their surprise assault last week, capturing 93 settlements.

More than 121,000 Kursk residents have been evacuated, Russia’s Ministry of Emergency Situations wrote on Telegram Monday.

Ukraine’s operations also targeted the Bryansk and Belgorod regions.

Apps reveal sensitive information

The security risk stemming from social media use is not hypothetical — there is a history of soldiers inadvertently revealing sensitive information by using their phones in conflict zones.

The United States and its “Five Eyes” intelligence allies – Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom – warned last year that Russian military hackers had been targeting Ukrainian soldiers’ mobile devices in a bid to steal battlefield information.

And when a high-profile Russian submarine commander was shot dead while jogging in 2023, Russian media reported he may have been targeted by an assailant tracking him on Strava, a popular running app.

The officer, Stanislav Rzhitsky, was using a public profile under his own name to track his running and cycling routes. He was killed while out jogging on one of his regular circuits.

And after a Ukrainian strike that killed nearly 100 Russian troops in the occupied Ukrainian city of Makiivka on New Year’s Day last year, Russia’s defense ministry said the “main cause” of the strike was the widespread use of cell phones by Russian soldiers, although some officials questioned that assessment.

Last month, Russian state media TASS reported that the country’s lower house of parliament proposed punishing Russian soldiers caught using smartphones while fighting in Ukraine.

The lawmakers suggested that carrying internet-connected cell phones that can help identify Russian troops or the location of forces should be classified as a “gross disciplinary offense” and be punishable by up to 10 days’ imprisonment. Multiple offenses could lead to up to 15 days in prison.

The law would also prohibit the use of other electronic devices meant for “household purposes” that allow for video and audio recording and the transmission of geolocation data.

It’s not just Russia and Ukraine though. The US Department of Defense banned military personnel from using geolocation features in 2018 after it emerged that Strava and other fitness tracking apps could pose security risks for forces around the world.

The app created an interactive heat map that displayed 1 billion activity data points made public by users, inadvertently revealing the locations of US bases in countries around the world.

Three staff members of a high school in the western Bosnian town of Sanski Most were killed on Wednesday when a school employee shot them and then tried to take his own life, police said.

Police were notified at 10:15 a.m.that a man had opened fire at the school with an automatic rifle, the police spokesman for Una-sana canton, Adnan Beganovic, said.

The shooter killed the school dean, the secretary and a teacher, then tried to take his own life and was “gravely injured,” Beganovic said.

Beganovic added that the suspect was transferred for emergency treatment in the nearby town of Banja Luka.

An investigation is underway, he said.

The school had not yet reopened from the summer holidays so no children were involved.

N1 TV, citing witnesses, said that a janitor who had a history of disagreements with the management and was under disciplinary proceedings, sought out specific people and shot them. Reuters could not immediately verify that report.

Mass shootings are comparatively rare in the Western Balkans which is awash with weapons that remained in private hands from wars in the 1990s.

In July, a war veteran in neighboring Croatia shot five people including his mother in a nursing home and wounded six others.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

The family of Alain Delon, who died at the weekend aged 88, has denied the actor’s request for his dog to euthanized and buried alongside him following outcry in France.

Delon, an icon of French cinema known for his starring roles in “The Leopard” and “Our Story,” died on Sunday.

The French actor had clearly expressed his wish to have his beloved Belgian Shepherd dog, Loubo, buried alongside him when he passed.

He disclosed the unusual request during an interview with Paris Match magazine in 2018,  describing Loubo as his “end-of-life” dog who he loved “like a child.”

“I’ve had 50 dogs in my life, but I have a special relationship with this one,” Delon told the magazine. “If I die before him, I’ll ask the vet to take us away together. He’ll put him to sleep in my arms.”

Following criticism from animal welfare groups in France, Delon’s family confirmed on Tuesday that they would not be granting the actor’s controversial dying wish.

French animal charity, the Brigitte Bardot Foundation, said in a post on X Tuesday that Delon’s relatives had confirmed that the dog “has his home and his family” and will not be euthanized.

Delon’s request had been strongly criticized in recent days.

France’s main animal protection organization, the Society for the Protection of Animals (SPA), had criticized the request, stressing on social media on Monday that “the life of an animal should not be conditional on that of a human being.”

The organization had offered instead to rehome the dog if needed.

Fellow animal welfare organization, 30 Million Friends, also strongly urged Delon’s request be denied.

In an article published Monday, which also paid tribute to Delon’s legacy as a “fervent supporter of the animal cause,” the charity expressed its hope that his dog wouldn’t be put down whilst “in good health.”

They also offered to help find “someone trustworthy” to take in Loubo if needed.

Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Authority arrested a man on Tuesday who it claimed had spread disinformation thought to have enflamed the recent unrest in the UK.

According to the FIA statement the “article contained a false claim about the arrest of a Muslim asylum seeker by police in the stabbing incident in a dance party in Southport on July 29, 2024.”

The FIA confirmed that the man has not been charged.

Police in Lahore have identified the man, arrested by the FIA, as Farhan Asif, and that he was questioned about the article on Monday.

It’s unclear if Asif has an attorney.

Asif told police he would earn close to a thousand dollars a month by doing this, according to the official.

After a statement from UK police, after the riots, Asif claims he deleted the story and issued an immediate apology.

The UK faced its worst disorder in more than a decade, after outbreaks of far-right, anti-immigrant violence swept the country. Protests first broke out late last month, after an anti-immigrant misinformation campaign stoked outrage over a stabbing attack that left three children dead in Southport, northern England.

People were walking or on donkey carts as they left areas east of Deir al-Balah. Some were in private cars, loaded with their belongings, including mattresses and blankets, water and gas bottles. The streets appear littered with leaflets dropped by the IDF reiterating the order to evacuate.

It now amounts to 39 square kilometers, just over 10 percent of Gaza’s total area.

Amid the latest evacuation, people swarmed onto a UN truck carrying food aid, carrying off small bags of aid.

A woman named Um Alaa, sitting on a cart, said it was the fourth time she has had to evacuate since October last year. “We don’t know where to go. We are going to look for a spot away from this dangerous place. The whole of Gaza has become dangerous.”

There was panic among some as to what might come next.

An elderly man said: “There are no longer places to go. There was only Deir al-Balah, and now they are asking us to evacuate Deir al-Balah. I am afraid that tomorrow they will confine all of us on the seashore of Deir al-Balah, then exterminate all of us.”

“After so many displacements, we no longer have the strength to evacuate yet another time.”

Um Ismail, a woman with small children, said people were defenseless.

“Why are they fighting us? We are not Hamas, we are simply people staying put in our homes. They displaced us not once, but 10 times. Why? What have we done?”

A woman in the back seat of a car exclaimed: “Do you want to know what’s happening – ask Hamas and the Israelis if you want to know what’s happening to us.”

Her family said it was their second displacement. For a very few, it was the first time since the conflict began that they’d had to move.

One man was crying as he drove a car packed with women and children. “I have no idea where we are heading to. Anywhere we can stay. God help us. This is the first time I am being displaced.”

But for Umm Said it was the seventh move in as many months.

“I don’t know where I am heading to. They said leave, we left. We have no idea…Every time we find a place and settle down, they say go back. And here we are. I have taken some flour for the children, what else can I take with me!”

Abu Muhammad Hajjaj, a resident of Gaza City, had been displaced from the Shujaiya neighborhood.

“People are crying and complaining of everything: disease, hunger, poverty, lack of hygiene, lack of medicine. You search in all of Gaza for paracetamol for a headache and you can’t find it.”

Hajjaj added: “Find us a solution. This is not a way to live. Where are the international organisations, where is the Security Council, where is the UN.”

“We don’t have money. We don’t have tents. We have nothing. We are not living in our own homes. We are on the street. They cannot keep on telling us to evacuate from here and there. This is not a way to live.”

Brazil will begin imposing restrictions on the entry of some foreign citizens from Asia who are seeking refuge in the South American nation as a means to migrate to the United States and Canada, the justice ministry’s press office said Wednesday.

The move, which will start on Monday, will affect Asian migrants who require visas to remain in Brazil.

A Federal Police investigation has shown these migrants often buy flights with layovers in Sao Paulo’s international airport, en route to other destinations, but stay in Brazil as a place from where they then begin their journey north, according to official documents provided to The Associated Press.

More than 70% of requests for refuge at the airport come from people with either Indian, Nepalese or Vietnamese nationalities, one of the documents says.

Starting next week, travelers without visas will either have to continue their journey by plane or return to their country of origin, the ministry said.

A report signed by federal police investigator Marinho da Silva Rezende Júnior informs the justice ministry that since the beginning of last year there has been “great turmoil” due to the influx of migrants at the airport in Guarulhos, the second most populous city in the state of Sao Paulo.

“Evidence suggests that those migrants, in their majority, are making use of the known — and extremely dangerous — route that goes from Sao Paulo to the western state of Acre, so they can access Peru and go toward Central America and then, finally, reach the US from its southern border,” one of the documents says.

An AP investigation in July found migrants passing through the Amazon, including some from Vietnam and India. Many returned to Acre, on the border with Peru, as US border policies triggered a wait-and-see attitude among them.

Brazil’s justice ministry said that the new guidelines will not apply to 484 migrants currently staying at Sao Paulo’s international airport.

Earlier on Wednesday, Brazil’s federal prosecutors’ office said in a statement that Sao Paulo’s international airport “is once again counting a high number of foreigners who arrive on flights of the airline LATAM and do not exit quickly due to the overload on the Brazilian migration system.”

The prosecutors’ office added that it will put pressure on airlines to give migrants some basic supplies as they wait for their concession of refuge. The term refers to an application for refugee status, regardless of the reason.

LATAM did not immediately respond a request for comment from the AP.

“It is important that we quickly decide on these refuge requests so that the growing arrival of foreigners does not impact the operation of the airport itself,” federal prosecutor Guilherme Rocha Göpfert said after a meeting at Sao Paulo’s international airport on Wednesday.

One of the documents says Brazil’s federal police received 9,082 requests for refuge this year through July 15. That is more than double the amount for the whole 2023, and the most in over a decade, according to the figures.

Brazil has historically welcomed refugees, particularly Afghans in recent years, regardless of ideological leanings of the Latin American country’s leaders.

But reports of migrants seeking refugee status as a means to use Brazil as a waystation has caused frustration in the government, particularly at a time when the system is burdened by many people from Haiti, Syria, Afghanistan and Ukraine seeking humanitarian visas.

Brazil granted 11,248 humanitarian visas to Afghans alone between between Sept. 2021 and April 2024, government figures show.

Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva decided in January 2023, in the early days of his administration, to bring his country back to the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, an intergovernmental agreement.

His administration has kept humanitarian visas, but guidelines for the concession of those has become more restrictive under his administration.

African nations could begin vaccinations against mpox within days, according to the continent’s top public health agency, as a World Health Organization official said the spread of a deadlier strain of the virus could be controlled and “was not the new Covid.”

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is at the epicenter of an mpox outbreak declared a global health emergency last week by WHO, with the deadlier clade Ib strain that is spreading quickly in the country detected in at least four other African nations.

“We didn’t start vaccinations yet. We’ll start in a few days if we are sure that everything is in place. End of next week, vaccines will start to arrive in DRC and other countries,” Africa CDC Director General Jean Kaseya told a briefing on Tuesday.

The viral disease, formerly known as monkeypox, can spread easily between people and from infected animals through close contact such as touching, kissing or sex, as well as through contaminated materials like sheets, clothing and needles, according to WHO. Symptoms include a fever, a painful rash, headache, muscle and back pain, low energy and enlarged lymph nodes.

Around 1,400 mpox infections have been reported across Africa over the past week, bringing the total number of cases on the continent to nearly 19,000 since the start of the year – up more than 100% on the same period last year, according to the Africa CDC. The latest outbreak has killed more than 500 people, the agency’s latest available data shows.

That’s prompted a scramble for vaccines as health officials in Africa work with overseas partners to meet a massive shortfall of doses.

“We need to have vaccines,” Kaseya told NPR last week. “Today, we are just talking about almost 200,000 doses (becoming) available. We need at least 10 million doses. The vaccine is so expensive — we can put it around $100 per dose. There are not so many countries in Africa that can afford the cost of this vaccine.”

The European Union and Danish vaccine maker Bavarian Nordic have so far pledged support, the European Commission said last week. Japan and the United States have also offered doses, Reuters reported, citing the DRC’s health minister.

‘Not the new Covid’

WHO’s declaration of a global health emergency is the second time in two years that the United Nations health agency has raised the alarm over the spread of mpox, which for decades had been found largely in central and western Africa.

Mpox is characterized by two genetic clades, I and II. A clade is a broad grouping of viruses that has evolved over decades that has distinct genetic and clinical differences.

Clade II was responsible for a global outbreak that was also declared to be a global health emergency from July 2022 to May 2023. But the new outbreak is driven by clade I, which causes more severe disease. The subtype that’s responsible for most of the ongoing spread, clade Ib, is relatively new.

Last week, the first clade lb case outside Africa was confirmed in Sweden in a patient who had recently traveled to the continent.

But with nations worldwide on high alert for the virus, a WHO official on Tuesday played down fears of a new pandemic as he called for a coordinated response to the outbreak.

“Mpox is not the new Covid,” WHO Europe Director Hans Kluge told a press briefing.

While more research is needed on the clade Ib strain, its spread can be controlled, he said.

“We know how to control mpox. And, in the European region, the steps needed to eliminate its transmission altogether,” Kluge said.

“The need for a coordinated response is now greatest in the African region,” he said. “We can, and must, tackle mpox together – across regions and continents.”

Kluge’s comments came as the Philippines and Thailand reported cases of mpox in travelers who had been to Africa. Meanwhile, Argentina’s health ministry said Wednesday that tests carried out on a crew member of a cargo ship that was placed in quarantine were negative for mpox.

This story has been updated with additional information.