Briefly

RUSSIA

Local elections kick off in 79 regions

Local elections kicked off in Russia during the weekend in 79 regions, with voters casting their ballots for governors, regional legislatures and city and municipal councils. Russian authorities were also holding local elections in the regions of Donetsk, Kherson, Lugansk and Zaporizhzhia, as well as on the Crimean Peninsula. In 16 Russian regions, voters were casting ballots for local legislatures. There were also multiple votes for city and municipal councils across the country and races for a few vacant seats in the State Duma, Russia's lower house of parliament.

GREECE

Heavy rains kill 11, rescue underway

Firefighters backed by the army were rescuing hundreds of people on Saturday in villages in central Greece blocked off by floods, as the death toll rose to 11. "More than 2,850 people have been rescued since the beginning of the bad weather," fire department spokesman Yannis Artopios told broadcaster Mega on Saturday. The flooding has laid waste to thousands of hectares of rich agricultural land and farmers have also lost substantial livestock numbers.

SUDAN

40 dead from air raids in southern Khartoum

At least 40 people were killed and dozens injured on Sunday in airstrikes in the south of Sudan's capital Khartoum, local activists said, as the war nears the end of its fifth month. The revised toll means the Sunday morning raid was one of the deadliest single attacks in the war that erupted in April between the head of the Sudanese Armed Forces Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, leader of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

Agencies Via Xinhua