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Russia's military claimed gains in pounding residential areas across Ukraine overnight, and Ukrainian forces pressed a counteroffensive to try to take back an occupied southern region, striking the last working bridge over a river in the Russian-occupied Kherson region, Ukrainian authorities said Saturday. Source

CAIRO - Libyan authorities said Saturday they found at least 15 migrants dead in the desert on the borders with Sudan, the latest tragedy involving migrants seeking a better life in Europe via perilous journeys through the conflict-wrecked nation. Source

FRANKFURT - In an interview conducted just weeks before he was stabbed and seriously wounded by an attacker in New York state, author Salman Rushdie said his life was now "relatively normal," after having lived in hiding for years because of death threats. Source

KYIV, Ukraine - Ukraine's health minister has accused Russian authorities of committing a crime against humanity by blocking access to affordable medicines in areas its forces have occupied since invading the country 5 1/2 months ago. Source

TEHRAN, Iran - Iranians reacted with praise and worry Saturday over the attack on novelist Salman Rushdie, the target of a decades-old fatwa by the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini calling for his death. Source

The Chinese air force is sending fighter jets and bombers to Thailand for a joint exercise with the Thai military on Sunday. The training will include air support, strikes on ground targets and small- and large-scale troop deployment, the Chinese Defence Ministry said in a statement posted on its website. Source

Nova Scotia's most beloved reptile is now 100 — or close enough for a party. Gus the gopher tortoise has been in residence at the Nova Scotia Museum of Natural History in Halifax since 1942. While his actual hatching day is lost to history, August seems like the right time to celebrate. Source

It's not what you'd expect to find on the 29th floor of a Toronto office building. Instead of cubicles, a complex arrangement of lasers, mirrors and optical fibres run from floor to ceiling, making up the quantum computer called Borealis. Source

Sweat streams down Rob Bushprnr's face as he struggles under the morning sun to bend the copper piping in a North London backyard that will soon be attached to a brand new air conditioner. According to government and market research company estimates, less than five per cent of homes in the U.K. Source

WARNING: This story contains disturbing details about alleged sex crimes against children. Investigators in Canada and Cambodia are looking into the activities of a Vancouver man arrested for a number of sex crimes against Cambodian children. The Child Protection Unit, an investigative group affiliated with Cambodia's Ministry of Interior and funded by non-profit organization Cambodian Children's Fund, says Andrew David Eyre, 43, was arrested and charged last week with aggravated rape of a…