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.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS