French authorities on Friday detained a man after receiving an alert from the Iranian consulate in Paris that someone had entered carrying an explosive, the capital's police authority said.

"The man has exited the consulate and is being controlled" by police, it said, after a security source told AFP that the mission called in law enforcement following a witness seeing a man enter carrying a grenade or an explosive belt.

Millions of Indians began voting Friday in a six-week election that's a referendum on Narendra Modi, the populist prime minister who has championed an assertive brand of Hindu nationalist politics and is seeking a rare third term as the country's leader.

The voters began queuing up at polling stations hours before they were allowed in at 7 a.m. in the first 21 states to hold votes, from the Himalayan mountains to the tropical Andaman Islands. Nearly 970 million voters — more than 10% of the world's population — will elect 543 members to the lower house of Parliament for five years during the staggered elections that run until June 1. The votes will be counted on June 4.

New York police have removed a pro-Palestinian protest encampment at Columbia University and arrested more than 100 demonstrators, including the daughter of a prominent Minnesota congresswoman.

Several students involved in the protest said they also were suspended from Columbia and Barnard College, including Isra Hirsi, who is the daughter of Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar.

A suicide bomber detonated his explosive-laden vest near a van carrying Japanese autoworkers, who narrowly escaped the attack Friday that wounded three bystanders in Pakistan's port city of Karachi, police said.

The van had been heading to an industrial area where the five Japanese nationals worked at Pakistan Suzuki Motors, local police chief Arshad Awan said. He said police escorting the Japanese returned fire after coming under attack, killing an accomplice of the suicide bomber whose remains were found from the scene of the attack.

Russia has made clear to Israel that Iran "does not want escalation", Moscow's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said Friday, after reports Israel had carried out retaliatory strikes against its arch-rival.

"There have been telephone contacts between the leadership of Russia and Iran, our representatives and the Israelis. We made it very clear in these conversations, we told the Israelis that Iran does not want escalation," Lavrov said in an interview with Russian radio stations.

International reactions Friday after Israel's reported attack on the Iranian province of Isfahan, where it has military bases and nuclear facilities:

- China -

Ukraine's air force claimed Friday it shot down a Russian strategic bomber, but Moscow officials said the plane crashed in a sparsely populated area due to a malfunction after a combat mission.

Neither claim could be independently verified. Previous Ukrainian claims of shooting down Russian warplanes during their more than two-year war have met with silence or denials from Moscow.

Europe wants two things from China: First, a shift in its relatively pro-Russia position on the war in Ukraine. Second, a reduction in the trade imbalance — Chinese goods exports to the EU exceeded its imports from the 27-nation bloc by 291 billion euros ($310 billion) last year.

It's not clear if it will get very far on either front.

The European Union's top diplomat urged Group of Seven foreign ministers on Thursday to take quick, concrete steps to provide more air defense systems to Ukraine, warning that continued delays could tilt the war in Moscow's favor.

Without more Patriot air defense missile systems to guard against incoming Russian strikes, "the electricity system of Ukraine will be destroyed. And no country can fight without having electricity at home, in the factories, in the front line," EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell warned.

Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, Rice University

Prior to launching a barrage of drones and missiles at Israel on April 13, 2024, Iran reportedly got word to Washington that its response to an earlier strike on its embassy compound in Syria would seek to avoid major escalation. The message was conveyed via the Gulf Arab state of Oman.