UNITED KINGDOM
Luton suspends flights
London Luton International Airport yesterday suspended all flights until the afternoon and asked passengers not to travel there after a “significant fire” caused the partial collapse of a parking structure. Flames leapt out of the third floor of a parking garage at Terminal 2 of the airport, as firefighters battled to bring the blaze under control. “Our priority remains supporting the emergency services and the safety of our passengers and staff,” the airport said in a statement, adding that it would suspend all flights until 3pm yesterday. Five people, including four firefighters and an airport employee, were admitted to hospital, the local ambulance service said.
UNITED STATES
More sub remains found
The Coast Guard has recovered the remaining debris, including presumed human remains, from a submersible that imploded on its way to explore the wreck of the Titanic, killing all five onboard, deep beneath the Atlantic Ocean’s surface, officials said on Tuesday. The recovery and transfer of remaining parts was completed on Wednesday last week, the Coast Guard said, and a photograph showed the intact aft titanium endcap of the 6.7m vessel. Additional presumed human remains were carefully recovered from within Titan’s debris and transported for analysis by US medical professionals, it said. The salvage mission was a follow-up to initial recovery operations on the ocean floor about 488m away from the Titanic, the Coast Guard said.
UNITED STATES
Voters weigh bears in poll
Alaskan voters were busy addressing weighty issues on Tuesday, casting their ballots for the overall champion of Katmai National Park’s annual Fat Bear Week. The final day of voting saw contestants “128 Grazer” and “32 Chunk” battling it out for the crown of biggest bruin in the park. The contest asks the public to compare before-and-after pictures of brown bears as they stuff themselves full of salmon in preparation for the lean months of hibernation. The champion is the bear who makes it through the series of head-to-head matchups. “Your vote decides who is the fattest of the fat,” organizers said. “128 Grazer’s powerful presence is as thunderous as her thick tree trunk thighs,” they added. “32 Chunk’s gargantuan gut has cast a shadow on his competition and has launched this leviathan to the last round. Can his pudginess propel him to the prize?” The aim is to raise awareness of brown bears and their habitat in Alaska, and the risks they face from human activity. “Fat bears are successful bears,” organizers said. The contest, which had appeared imperiled by the near-shutdown of the US government after a Washington standoff, was rocked last year by a ballot stuffing scandal.
FINLAND
‘Heavy force’ hit gas line
The damage to the Baltic Sea gas pipeline that burst on Sunday was caused by “quite heavy force,” Estonian Minister of Defense Hanno Pevkur said yesterday, a day after Finland said it could have been a deliberate action. The Balticconnector subsea gas pipeline and a telecommunications cable connects Finland and Estonia. On Tuesday, Helsinki said the damage was likely caused by “outside activity” and that the cause was being investigated. “It can clearly be seen that these damages are caused by quite heavy force,” Pevkur said. Henri Vanhanen, research fellow at the Finnish Institute for International Affairs, said the central issue would be how NATO reacts if evidence was gathered that a state actor was behind the pipeline damage.
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