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.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to