PHILIPPINES
Firecracker depot blast kills 5
Five people, including a four-year-old child, were killed in a massive explosion at a pyrotechnics warehouse in Zamboanga, emergency services said yesterday. The Saturday afternoon blast tore a large hole in the ground, sent debris careening into nearby buildings and houses and ignited a blaze, fire investigator Luigi Chan said. Four warehouse workers and the four-year-old son of one of the staffers were killed, Chan said. The city disaster office confirmed the death toll and said another 38 people had been injured in the incident, eight of them seriously. Authorities said they were investigating the cause of the explosion, which created a 20m crater, dismantled the depot’s walls and rained rubble on a nearby soft drinks factory, a grains and flour warehouse and area homes.
FRANCE
One dead in wedding attack
One person was killed and five others wounded in Thionville when several masked gunmen opened fire at a wedding ceremony, police sources said yesterday. Sources suggested that the attack in the northeastern city was linked to a settling of scores between drug traffickers. The shooting took place at a reception hall overnight on Saturday to yesterday, with about 100 people in attendance. Two people were seriously injured and one of them was in a critical condition. The shooters fled the scene. “At a quarter past one in the morning, a group of people went outside to smoke in front of the hall, and then three heavily armed men arrived and opened fire in their direction,” police said. The assailants arrived in a 4X4 vehicle, “probably a BMW,” the source said. Members of law enforcement believe that a settling of scores linked to drug trafficking was behind the violence.
UKRAINE
Missile strike kills seven
Russian missiles on Saturday slammed into a town in southern Ukraine, killing seven civilians, including children, and wounding dozens more, local authorities reported. Officials published photographs of bodies stretched out under picnic blankets in a park in Vilniansk, and deep craters in the blackened earth next to the charred, twisted remains of a building. Thirty-six people were wounded in the attack, authorities said, and declared a day of mourning yesterday. Vilniansk is in Zaporizhzhia Oblast, less than 30km from the local capital and north of the front lines, as Russian forces continue to occupy part of the province. Zaporizhzhia Governor Ivan Fedorov said that three children were among the dead and nine more were wounded.
UNITED STATES
Rescuers help dolphins
Animal rescuers were on Saturday trying to keep dozens of dolphins away from shallow waters around Cape Cod, Massachusetts, after 125 of the creatures stranded themselves a day earlier. Teams found one group of 10 Atlantic white-sided dolphins swimming in a dangerously shallow area at dawn on Saturday, and managed to herd them out into deeper water, the International Fund for Animal Welfare said. Scouts also found a second group of 25 dolphins swimming close to the shore near Eastham, the organization said, adding that herding efforts were ongoing as the tide dropped throughout the morning. Ten dolphins died during the stranding Friday at The Gut — or Great Island — in Wellfleet, at the Herring River. The organization said it was the largest mass-stranding it had dealt with on the Cape during its 26-year history in the area.
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