By Ari Rabinovitch

JERUSALEM (Reuters) -Israel’s president urged the government to abandon attempts to push through bitterly contested plans to overhaul the judiciary and seek a model with broad support as tens of thousands of protesters returned to the streets on Thursday.

The drive by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-right government to enact sweeping changes to Israel’s courts has sparked domestic uproar and alarm among the country’s Western allies. If the proposal passed, it would mean greater government sway in selecting judges and limit the power of the Supreme Court to strike down legislation.

After weeks of demonstrations across the country that have exposed deep divisions in Israeli society, President Isaac Herzog, who has been mediating between the sides, warned in a televised prime time address of a “disaster”.

He said Israel had reached a “point of no return” and called on the coalition government to rethink the proposed legislation, which is strongly backed by nationalist and religious parties.

“It is wrong, it is harsh, it undermines our democratic foundations. And therefore it must be replaced with another, agreed upon outline immediately,” Herzog said.

As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu left on a visit to Rome, he had to elude flag-waving Israelis who clogged the access routes to Ben Gurion Airport with motor convoys.

Before leaving, he managed to greet visiting Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin, who later underlined Washington’s concern over the proposals by saying that both U.S. and Israeli democracy were built on an independent judiciary.

The interventions by Herzog and Austin underlined the unusual depth of concern over the proposals, which Netanyahu – on trial on graft charges he denies – says are needed to rein in what it calls activist judges who have interfered in political decision making.

Critics, who range from the business elite to former military officers as well as opposition parties, say they would destroy the system of checks and balances needed in a democracy and hand uncontrolled powers to the government of the day.

THREE WOUNDED IN SHOOTING

Opinion polls have found that most Israelis want the proposals shelved or amended to satisfy a national consensus. Tens of thousands have demonstrated and some military reservists have also refused to show up for training exercises.

The sense of broader crisis was further underlined when a Palestinian gunman from the Islamist movement Hamas opened fire on a main street in central Tel Aviv, wounding three people.

Austin postponed and shortened his Israel leg of a regional tour. Rather than travel to Israel’s Defence Ministry in Tel Aviv, around which demonstrators were facing off with police, his meetings were relocated to an aerospace compound near Ben Gurion.

At a news conference later with his Israeli counterpart, Austin evoked comments by President Joe Biden, who has called for reaching a consensus on the issue in Israel.

“The genius of American democracy and Israeli democracy is that they are both built on strong institutions, on checks and balances, and on an independent judiciary,” he said.

Israeli police minister Itamar Ben-Gvir told reporters at the airport, where he was coordinating the response to the demonstrations, that “nobody said don’t protest.”

“But it’s not okay, it’s not right, it’s not proper to ruin the lives of 70,000 people,” he said.

He appeared to be referring to people stuck in traffic as well as those travelling through Ben Gurion, whose spokesperson said the expected passenger volume for Thursday was 65,000.

As Thursday’s protest came to an end it was announced that the commander of police in Tel Aviv was being reassigned. Ben-Gvir said the transfer had been planned in advanced and was not a dismissal.

(Reporting by Ari Rabinovitch; Writing by Dan Williams; Editing by Nick Macfie, William Maclean and Grant McCool)

(Reuters) -A Brooklyn federal jury on Thursday convicted a former 21st Century Fox executive and acquitted another after a trial over an alleged scheme to bribe South American soccer officials to secure lucrative broadcasting rights.

Jurors found Hernan Lopez guilty but acquitted Carlos Martinez on the same charges. South American sports marketing company Full Play Group SA was also convicted.

An attorney for Lopez, John Gleeson, said in a statement that he was disappointed with the verdict but looked forward to appealing based on “legal and factual errors” in the case.

Martinez’s attorney, Steven McCool, told reporters he was “tremendously grateful to the jury for bringing justice to Carlos.”

Lawyers for Full Play Group did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

A cooperating witness testified at trial that he paid tens of millions of dollars in bribes with the blessing of defendants Martinez and Lopez, both former Fox executives.

The case stems from a sweeping probe of corruption in international soccer and its governing body, FIFA, that has resulted in scores of convictions since U.S. and international authorities made their first arrests in 2015.

“Today’s verdict is a resounding victory for justice and for soccer fans around the world,” Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said in a statement.

Lawyers for Martinez and Lopez denied wrongdoing claimed that the witness, Argentine businessman Alejandro Burzaco, falsely accused the two men in hopes of getting a lighter sentence under his plea agreement with prosecutors. A lawyer for Burzaco denied those claims.

Jurors saw emails, contracts and business records that prosecutors say revealed a years-long plot by Martinez and Lopez to advance their careers by funneling payments to soccer officials through sham contracts and consulting agreements.

The government’s case hinged largely on testimony by Burzaco, who has yet to be sentenced. Burzaco told jurors that Martinez and Lopez were aware of and approved the scheme, which he said they discussed during multiple meetings.

Lawyers for Martinez and Lopez denied Burzaco’s account and said their clients were unaware of his scheme. None of the emails and documents cited by prosecutors directly implicated the two men in the scheme, they argued.

Prosecutors said Burzaco’s testimony was “devastating” and alleged that emails showed him discussing the bribes with Martinez and Lopez in coded terms.

(Reporting by Jack Queen; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Daniel Wallis)

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Thursday he discussed fentanyl and arms trafficking in a meeting with U.S. Homeland Security Adviser Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall.

Lopez Obrador also said on Twitter the two talked about U.S. President Joe Biden’s “decision to respect (Mexico’s) sovereignty.” Some Republican lawmakers have called on the U.S. military to intervene in Mexico after two Americans were killed last week in Mexico’s northern state of Tamaulipas.

(Reporting by Kylie Madry; Editing by Sarah Morland)

By Pavel Polityuk and Andriy Perun

KYIV/ZOLOCHIV, Ukraine (Reuters) – Russia fired a huge wave of missiles across Ukraine on Thursday as people slept, killing at least nine civilians and knocking out power in an attack Kyiv said included six Kinzhal hypersonic cruise missiles, one of Moscow’s most valuable weapons.

The mass strikes on targets far from the front were the first such wave since mid-February and shattered the longest calm since Moscow began an air campaign against Ukraine’s civil infrastructure five months ago.

They also briefly forced Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant off the grid.

“The occupiers can only terrorise civilians. That’s all they can do. But it won’t help them. They won’t avoid responsibility for everything they have done,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, describing strikes that hit infrastructure and residential buildings in ten regions.

Russia’s defence ministry said it had carried out a “massive retaliatory strike” as payback for a cross-border raid last week. It claimed to have hit all its intended targets, destroying drone bases, disrupting railways and damaging facilities that make and repair arms.

Villagers in Zolochiv in Ukraine’s western Lviv region carried a body in a black plastic bag over the rubble of a brick house completely destroyed by a missile. They put the body into the back of a white van with another. A dog lay curled up on a carpet in the ruins.

Oksana Ostapenko said the house belonged to her sister Halyna, whose body was still buried under the rubble with two other family members.

“They still haven’t found them. We were hoping that they’re alive. But they’re not alive,” she said.

Another civilian was reported killed by the missiles in the central Dnipro region. Three civilians were separately reported killed by artillery in Kherson.

Moscow says such hits are intended to reduce Ukraine’s ability to fight. Kyiv says the air strikes have no military purpose and aim to harm and intimidate civilians, a war crime.

In the capital Kyiv, a seven-hour alert through the night was the longest of Russia’s five-month air campaign.

“I heard a very loud explosion, very loud. We quickly jumped out of bed and saw one car on fire. Then the other cars caught on fire as well. The glass shattered on the balconies and windows,” said Liudmyla, 58, holding a toddler in her arms on a Kyiv street near wrecked cars.

“The child got scared and jumped out of bed,” she said. “How can they do this? How is this possible? They are not humans.”

HYPERSONIC MISSILES

Moscow confirmed it had used hypersonic Kinzhal – Russian for dagger – missiles in Thursday’s attack. Ukrainian officials said it was the first time they had faced so many of the weapons, which Ukraine has no way to shoot down.

The White House said that the barrage was “devastating” to see and Washington would continue to provide Ukraine with air defence capabilities.

Russia is believed to have just a few dozen Kinzhals, which fly many times faster than the speed of sound and are built to carry nuclear warheads with a range of more than 2,000 km (1,200 miles). In his speeches, President Vladimir Putin regularly touts the Kinzhal as a weapon for which the transatlantic NATO alliance backing Kyiv has no answer.

Ukraine said the attacks had knocked out power in various places including to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, severing it from the grid and forcing it onto emergency diesel power to prevent a meltdown. It was later reconnected to Ukraine’s energy grid, operator Ukrenergo said.

The plant, which Russia has held since capturing it early in the war, is near the front line and both sides have warned in the past of a potential for disaster. Moscow said it was safe.

U.N. nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi appealed for a protection zone around the plant.

“Each time we are rolling a dice. And if we allow this to continue time after time then one day our luck will run out,” Grossi told the IAEA’s 35-nation Board of Governors.

Kyiv, the Black Sea port of Odesa and Kharkiv were all hit. Targets stretched from Zhytomyr, Vynnytsia and Rivne in the west to Dnipro and Poltava in central Ukraine, officials said.

UKRAINE FIGHTS ON AT BAKHMUT

On the battlefield, the week has seen an apparent shift as Ukraine has decided to fight on in Bakhmut, a small city that has borne the brunt of a Russian winter offensive in the bloodiest fighting of the war.

Moscow says Bakhmut is important as a step to securing the surrounding Donbas region, a major war aim. The West says the ruined city has little value and Russian forces are sacrificing lives to give Putin his only victory since sending hundreds of thousands of reservists into battle at the end of last year.

Ukraine had appeared likely to withdraw from Bakhmut, but commanders now say they are inflicting enough damage on Russia’s assault force to justify staying and fighting on.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of Russia’s Wagner private army which has led the fighting in Bakhmut, said on Wednesday his forces controlled all of the city east of a river through it.

Moscow, which claims to have annexed a fifth of Ukraine, says it launched its “special military operation” a year ago to combat a security threat. Kyiv and the West call it an unprovoked war to subdue an independent state.

(This story has been refiled to remove extraneous words in paragraph 18)  

(Reporting by Reuters bureaux,; Writing by Peter Graff, Alexandra Hudson, Editing by Angus MacSwan)

(Reuters) – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Thursday all mammography facilities in the country will be required to notify patients about the density of their breast tissues, as that can potentially make detection of tumors more difficult.

Breast density can influence the accuracy of mammography, which relies on X-rays passing through breast tissues to diagnose and locate tumors.

Mammograms remain the best tool for screening and detection of breast cancer, which is the second most common form of cancer among women in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The agency recommends patients with dense breasts, a normal and common finding in mammograms, to discuss their individual situation with their respective healthcare providers.

The updated rules will help ensure patients receive information on the potential need for further evaluation or a repeat mammogram, the health regulator said.

“Increasing early detection is the best way to improve outcomes, and this new standard does just that,” Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick said in a statement.

(Reporting by Aditya Samal; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)