An Iraqi man who staged Quran burnings in Sweden was shot dead hours before he was set to receive a verdict on Thursday in a trial tied to the desecrations of Islam’s holy book that drew worldwide uproar, authorities said.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, said in 2023 that Sweden had gone into “battle-array for war on the Muslim world” by supporting “the criminal”, and that “all Islamic scholars agree that those who desecrate the Koran deserved the most severe punishment”.

Several undersea cables running under the surface of the Baltic Sea have been damaged in suspected sabotage incidents in recent months.

As tensions rise, NATO has launched Baltic Sentry 2025 to enhance security and resilience. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has emphasized the need for greater coordination in protecting critical infrastructure from sabotage.

He'd also left a notebook behind after an interview & forgot his mobile phone at a foreign embassy. Read more at straitstimes.com.

Salwan Momika was set to stand trial over hate incitement charges on Thursday.

The Nordic country has opened an investigation into the damage, just weeks after NATO stepped up its military presence in the area following a series of similar incidents.

Swedish authorities boarded a vessel suspected of being involved in an earlier underwater sabotage of cables in the Baltic Sea on Monday.

Russia is "the main actor" in hybrid attacks on the alliance, said a senior NATO official following a spate of incidents.

Sweden has opened a preliminary investigation into suspected aggravated “sabotage” and ordered the detention of a vessel in the Baltic Sea suspected of damaging an underwater fiber optic cable connecting Latvia and the Swedish island of Gotland earlier that day.

Latvian navy coordinating with Nato over incident which comes after military alliance boosted its presence in Baltic Sea in December

Swedish authorities have seized a ship suspected of damaging a data cable running under the Baltic Sea to Latvia. The Vezhen - a Maltese-flagged ship - is now anchored outside the Swedish port of Karlskrona.