MOSCOW (TASS) – Civil aviation is under threat due to actions by the U.S. Air Force over the Black Sea, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote on her Telegram channel on Sunday. “The actions by the U.S. Air Force created a threat to civil aviation. And if now a catastrophe in airspace over the open waters of the Black Sea has been prevented, this doesn’t mean that the U.S. and NATO can continue to risk people’s lives with impunity,” she wrote, TASS reported. The diplomat added that, according to Russian experts, “the increased intensity of the flights of NATO planes near Russia’s borders, including over the Black Sea, creates the risks of the emergence of dangerous incidents with regards to civilian aircraft.” On Friday, Russia’s National Defense Control Center reported that Russian Su-30SM and Su-27 fighter jets were scrambled to intercept an RC-135 reconnaissance plane of the U.S. Air Force and a CL-600 Artemis reconnaissance plane of the U.S. ground forces over the Black Sea. The crew of Aeroflot’s Tel Aviv - Moscow flight received a command from air traffic controllers to change its altitude as another aircraft was crossing its path.

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MICHIGAN (Dispatches) – A U.S. congressman has posted a picture of himself and others smiling and holding guns around a Christmas tree, just days after four teenagers were killed in a shooting at a Michigan high school. “Merry Christmas! ps. Santa, please bring ammo,” U.S. Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky wrote on Twitter. Massie, who represents a solidly Republican district, and his family can be seen in the photo holding firearms resembling an M60 machine gun, AR-15 semi-automatic rifle and a Thompson submachine gun. Under U.S. law, weapons such as machine guns are restricted to the military, law enforcement and civilians who have obtained special licenses for weapons made before May 1986. Democratic U.S. Representative John Yarmuth, who chairs the U.S. House of Representatives Budget Committee, condemned his fellow Kentuckian’s post. “I’m old enough to remember Republicans screaming that it was insensitive to try to protect people from gun violence after a tragedy,” Yarmuth wrote on Twitter, apparently referring to calls for gun control laws. “I promise not everyone in Kentucky is an insensitive a------,” he added. This comes after on Tuesday, a student, 15, carried out the deadliest U.S. school shooting this year, the latest in a decades-long series of mass shootings at U.S. schools.

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MOSCOW (Dispatches) – The Belarusian defense ministry said on Sunday it had summoned Ukraine’s military attaché to protest against “repeated violations of Belarus’ airspace” by Ukrainian aircraft. Relations between the two countries have plummeted since last year, when Russia sided with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko during mass street protests and Lukashenko in turn became more vocal in his support for Moscow against Ukraine. Belarus handed a note of protest to the Ukrainian official, the ministry said in a statement. “The military attaché was informed that the Ukrainian side is avoiding a dialogue to resolve disputes ... which is very worrying,” the ministry said. Belarus said on Saturday that a Ukrainian military helicopter had flown one km (0.6 miles) into Belarusian territory during maneuvers. A spokesperson for Ukraine’s border guard service denied the accusation. U.S. President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold a video call on Tuesday, with the two set to discuss the tense situation in Ukraine. “The conversation will indeed take place on Tuesday,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Reuters. “Bilateral relations, of course Ukraine and the realization of the agreements reached in Geneva are the main (items) on the agenda,” he said.

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MUMBAI (Reuters) – India on Sunday reported its highest single-day COVID-19 deaths since July after two states revised their death tolls. The eastern state of Bihar added 2,426 unrecorded deaths while the southern state of Kerala added 263 deaths to their tallies on Sunday, a federal health ministry spokesperson told Reuters. The revised figures took single-day deaths to 2,796, the highest since July 21, according to a Reuters tally. A devastating second wave in March and April this year saw thousands of deaths and millions affected. Indian states have continued to add unreported COVID-19 deaths in recent months, lending weight to some medical experts’ opinions that such deaths are much higher than the reported number of 473,326.

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TUNIS (Al Jazeera) – Tunisia’s powerful UGTT union has called for early elections, saying it was concerned for the country’s democratic gains because of the president’s reluctance to announce a plan for political reforms. UGTT leader Noureddine Taboubi’s comments on Sunday, in a speech to thousands of his supporters, piled additional pressure on President Kais Saied, more than four months after he seized all political powers. “We supported July 25 because it was an opportunity to save the country and implement reforms … but we have become afraid for Tunisians’ democratic gains because of the excessive reluctance to announce a roadmap”, Taboubi said. He added that the president should call for a dialogue with political parties and national organizations that includes reviewing the electoral law and agreeing on early and transparent elections.

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TRIPOLI (Anadolu) – Less than three weeks before Libya’s presidential polls, dozens of Libyan lawmakers on Sunday called for questioning the head of the country’s elections commission along with judicial poll supervisors, Anadolu Agency reported. In a statement, the MPs criticized what they said “the commission’s silence over suspicions of fraud, vote-buying, and attempts to influence the judiciary.” The statement, signed by 70 lawmakers, called for holding a parliamentary session on Monday “to question Emad Al-Sayeh, the head of the elections commission, and representatives of the judicial authorities supervising the polls.” The move came after the Court of First Instance in the western city of al-Zawiya last Tuesday ordered the exclusion of Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar from the Dec. 24 presidential polls.