SUDAN
Thirty killed in airstrikes
At least 30 people were killed in airstrikes on a neighborhood in the south of the capital, Khartoum, yesterday, a local group said. “At about 7:15am, military aircraft bombarded the Qouro market area,” said the local resistance committee, one of the groups that used to organize pro-democracy protests and now provides assistance during the war. It initially said that 11 were killed, but later said revised that tally to 30. Meanwhile, Bashair Teaching Hospital issued an “urgent appeal” for all medical professionals in the area to come and help treat the “increasing number of injured people arriving.”
TURKEY
Cave-stuck researcher moved
An injured US explorer trapped more than 1,000m deep in a cave for eight days has been transported 300m toward the surface, rescuers said yesterday. Mark Dickey, 40, reported falling sick on Sept. 2 while exploring Morca Cave in the Taurus Mountains with an international team. Dickey fell ill at a depth of 1,120m and has been resting at a base camp 1,040m underground. He was moved by rescuers on a stretcher, beginning just before 3:30pm on Saturday over 10 hours. He is now at a depth of 700m and “has a horizontal, but narrow passage between him and the campsite,” where he can rest before continuing the journey up, the Turkish Caving Federation wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.
POLAND
Vatican beatifies family
In an unprecedented move, the Vatican yesterday beatified a Polish family of nine — a married couple and their small children — who were executed by the Nazis during World War II for sheltering Jews. During a ceremonious Mass, papal envoy Cardinal Marcello Semeraro read out the Latin formula of the beatification of the Ulma family signed last month by Pope Francis. A contemporary painting representing Jozef and Wiktoria Ulma with their children was uncovered near the altar. It is the first time that an entire family has been beatified.
UNITED KINGDOM
Man arrested for spying
Police on Saturday said that they had arrested a man in his twenties for spying, with the Sunday Times reporting that he was a researcher in the parliament suspected of working for China. “Officers from the Metropolitan Police Service arrested two men on 13 March on suspicion of offences under section 1 of the Official Secrets Act, 1911,” the police said. “A man in his 30s was arrested at an address in Oxfordshire and a man in his 20s was arrested at an address in Edinburgh.” The Sunday Times said the suspect in his 20s had contacts with lawmakers from the ruling Conservative Party while working as a parliamentary researcher. If proven, it would represent one of the most serious breaches of security involving a hostile state at the parliament.
UNITED STATES
Two Sept. 11 victims ID’d
Twenty-two years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the remains of a man and a woman who died in the collapse of the World Trade Center have been identified through DNA analysis, authorities said ahead of the latest commemoration of the 2001 disaster. The identities of the two are being withheld at the request of their families. They bring to 1,649 the number of victims whose remains have been identified, of the total 2,753 who died when al-Qaeda operatives hijacked civilian airliners and crashed them into New York’s twin towers, the city’s mayor and Office of the Chief Medical Examiner said.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sent Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) greetings with what appeared to be restrained rhetoric that comes as Pyongyang moves closer to Russia and depends less on its long-time Asian ally. Kim wished “the Chinese people greater success in building a modern socialist country,” in a reply message to Xi for his congratulations on North Korea’s birthday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported yesterday. The 190-word dispatch had little of the florid language that had been a staple of their correspondence, which has declined significantly this year, an analysis by Seoul-based specialist service NK Pro showed. It said
On an island of windswept tundra in the Bering Sea, hundreds of miles from mainland Alaska, a resident sitting outside their home saw — well, did they see it? They were pretty sure they saw it — a rat. The purported sighting would not have gotten attention in many places around the world, but it caused a stir on Saint Paul Island, which is part of the Pribilof Islands, a birding haven sometimes called the “Galapagos of the north” for its diversity of life. That is because rats that stow away on vessels can quickly populate and overrun remote islands, devastating bird
‘CLOSER TO THE END’: The Ukrainian leader said in an interview that only from a ‘strong position’ can Ukraine push Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘to stop the war’ Decisive actions by the US now could hasten the end of the Russian war against Ukraine next year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday after telling ABC News that his nation was “closer to the end of the war.” “Now, at the end of the year, we have a real opportunity to strengthen cooperation between Ukraine and the United States,” Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram after meeting with a bipartisan delegation from the US Congress. “Decisive action now could hasten the just end of Russian aggression against Ukraine next year,” he wrote. Zelenskiy is in the US for the UN
A 64-year-old US woman took her own life inside a controversial suicide capsule at a Swiss woodland retreat, with Swiss police on Tuesday saying several people had been arrested. The space-age looking Sarco capsule, which fills with nitrogen and causes death by hypoxia, was used on Monday outside a village near the German border. The portable human-sized pod, self-operated by a button inside, has raised a host of legal and ethical questions in Switzerland. Active euthanasia is banned in the country, but assisted dying has been legal for decades. On the same day it was used, Swiss Department of Home