HIROSHIMA, Japan, May 21 (Reuters) - U.S. President Joe Biden on Sunday said the Group of Seven nations had agreed a united approach to China that called for diversifying supply chains to reduce dependence on one country, and hinted that he could speak with China's president soon.

ROME, May 21 (Reuters) - Flights serving the eastern Sicilian city of Catania were halted on Sunday after an eruption from nearby Mount Etna spewed volcanic ash onto its runways, airport authorities said.

The 3,330 metre (10,925 ft) high volcano can burst into spectacular action several times a year, firing lava and ash high over the Mediterranean island. The last major eruption was in 1992.

Flights to and from Catania, a popular tourist destination, would be suspended until normal safety conditions could be guaranteed, the airport said on Twitter.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A lawyer who quit Donald Trump’s legal team this past week attributed his decision Saturday to strategy disagreements with a close adviser to the former president.

Timothy Parlatore, who had been a key lawyer for Trump in a Justice Department special counsel investigation into the potential mishandling of classified documents at his Florida estate, told CNN in an interview on Saturday that there were “certain individuals that made defending the president much harder than it needed to be.”

HIROSHIMA, Japan, May 21 (Reuters) - U.S. President Joe Biden and House Republican Speaker Kevin McCarthy will meet to discuss the debt limit on Monday after a "productive" phone call as the president headed back to Washington, the top House Republican leader said on Sunday.

McCarthy, speaking to reporters following the call, said there were positive discussions on solving the crisis and that staff-level talks were set to resume later on Sunday.

MOSCOW, May 21 (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday congratulated the Wagner mercenary force and the Russian army for what he called the "liberation" of the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, which Russia calls by its Soviet-era name of Artyomovsk.

In a statement published on the Kremlin website, Putin said that the battle - the longest and bloodiest of the 15-month war - had ended in a Russian victory, and that all those who had excelled in it on Moscow's side would be given state awards.

HIROSHIMA, Japan (AP) — Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol prayed together Sunday at a memorial for Korean victims of the 1945 atomic bombing in Hiroshima on the sidelines of the Group of Seven summit, as the two leaders continued efforts to mend ties repeatedly hurt by disputes stemming from Japan’s wartime brutality.

Yoon was in Hiroshima with leaders from seven other guest nations and G7 countries for “outreach” sessions on Sunday, the last day of the three-day summit.

MOSCOW, May 21. /TASS/: Russia’s Investigative Committee said on Sunday it has charged in absentia the prosecutor and judge of the International Criminal Court (ICC) who issued a warrant for the arrest of Russian President Vladimir Putin and children’s rights ombudswoman Maria Lvova-Belova.

JERUSALEM (AP) — An extremist Israeli Cabinet minister visited a sensitive Jerusalem holy site on Sunday at a time of heightened tensions with the Palestinians.

The visit by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, his second known visit since becoming a member of Israel’s most right-leaning government ever, drew condemnations from the Palestinians and Israel’s neighbor Jordan, which acts as the custodian of the site.

BEIJING (AP) — The collapse of a nine-story building in central China that killed 54 people last year was caused by shoddy, illegal construction and local officials’ failure to enforce standards, according to an official report released Sunday.

At least nine people including the building owner were reported arrested following the April 2022 disaster in Changsha, which trapped survivors under rubble for up to five days. Nine people were injured.

HIROSHIMA /Japan/ May 21. /TASS/: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that the participation of his country in a possible delivery of F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine is not on the agenda.

"First of all, everyone knows that we don’t even have such planes," Scholz said in an interview with RTL and Ntv television channels speaking on the sidelines of the Group of Seven (G7) Summit in Japan.

BEIJING, May 21 (Reuters) - China's cyberspace regulator said on Sunday that products made by U.S. memory chip manufacturer Micron Technology (MU.O) had failed its network security review and that it would bar operators of key infrastructure from procuring from the firm.

According to China's broad definition of critical information infrastructure, this could include sectors ranging from transport to finance.

HIROSHIMA, Japan (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday that Russian forces weren’t occupying Bakhmut, casting doubt on Moscow’s insistence that the eastern Ukrainian city had fallen.

Responding to a reporter’s question about the status of the city at the Group of Seven summit in Japan, Zelenskyy said: “Bakhmut is not occupied by the Russian Federation as of today.”