IRAN
Tehran threatens retaliation
Tehran yesterday again threatened retaliation for the deaths of seven Revolutionary Guards in a strike on Damascus, with the army chief saying his country’s enemies will “regret” the killings. The government has vowed to avenge Monday’s airstrike on the Syrian capital that it blamed on its archenemy Israel, which has not commented. The attack leveled the Iranian embassy’s consular annex in Damascus, killing seven Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps members including two generals. Iran’s response “will be carried out at the right time, with the necessary precision and planning, and with maximum damage to the enemy so that they regret their action,” Armed Forces Chief of Staff Major General Mohammad Bagheri said yesterday.
UKRAINE
Shelling kills six people
A Russian nighttime attack on Kharkiv killed six people and wounded almost a dozen, Kyiv said yesterday. The northeastern city 30km from the Russian border — has seen increased deadly attacks in the past few months as Moscow’s invasion drags on for more than two years. “Six killed and 11 wounded as a result of the enemy’s nighttime missile attack on Kharkiv,” the local prosecutor’s office wrote on social media. Authorities said the strike hit just after midnight. “At about 12:20am, the Russian armed forces launched missile attacks on the residential Shevchenkivskyi district of Kharkiv,” the prosecutor’s office said. It added that “high-rise buildings, administrative buildings, dormitories, a kindergarten, shops, cafes and cars were damaged.”
KAZAKHSTAN
Russian space capsule lands
A Russian space capsule with two women and one man yesterday safely landed in a steppe after their missions aboard the International Space Station. The Soyuz MS-24 carrying Russia’s Oleg Novitsky, NASA’s Loral O’Hara and Marina Vasilevskaya of Belarus touched down southeast of the remote town of Dzhezkazgan at 12:17pm. O’Hara arrived at the International Space Station on Sept. 15 last year, spending 204 days there, NASA said.
GERMANY
Counterfeit US money seized
Police on Friday said they had seized counterfeit US dollars with a face value of US$103 million, thought to have been destined for the US market. Four pallets with 75 boxes full of fake notes were found during raids at a house in the northern town of Juebek and two business addresses in Hamburg. The forgeries could be “identified on closer inspection,” investigators in Kiel said in a statement. Police received a tip-off from US investigators which led them to the stash. The dodgy cash was suspected to have come from a “wholesaler in Turkey,” storing the bills in Germany on their way to the US.
UNITED STATES
Salmon escape truck crash
Tens of thousands of endangered salmon being transported by truck to a river survived a road crash by escaping into a nearby creek, officials said. A large tanker vehicle transporting the young salmon was travelling in a mountainous area of the northwestern state of Oregon on March 29 when it rolled on its side and skidded off the road. The 16m-long truck ended up on its roof — fortuitously for its slippery passengers, right next to a small creek. “About 77,000 smolts made it into the creek when the tanker overturned,” the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife said in a statement. The truck driver sustained minor injuries, while about 25,000 smolts failed to reach the river.
‘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
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
CONFIDENT ON DEAL: ‘Ukraine wants a seat at the table, but wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have a say? It’s been a long time since an election, the US president said US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and added that he was more confident of a deal to end the war after US-Russia talks. Trump increased pressure on Zelenskiy to hold elections and chided him for complaining about being frozen out of talks in Saudi Arabia. The US president also suggested that he could meet Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month as Washington overhauls its stance toward Russia. “I’m very disappointed, I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when asked about the Ukrainian
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